


Don't Break Your Neck as You Fall in Love

by P413



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Always-Girl-Cisco, F/M, Genderbending, Implied Sexual Content, lots of pinning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2018-09-18 22:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9406574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/P413/pseuds/P413
Summary: Cisco is positively sure the universe is mocking her.  Why else would it have her work with someone who looks like her own personal nightmare on a stick and then have her fall in love with him?   There's a certain kind of irony in there somewhere.  Very laughable, really.  But she's too busy floating in sky blue eyes to laugh.Harry can hardly believe he's found someone to love again.  And who loves him back.  He's always thought he was doomed to live alone but life has proven him wrong twice now.  He doesn't quite like that track record but he can't very well complain.  He just needs to keep her safe this time around.  Which is harder than he would hope.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the first chapter of my girl!Cisco/Harry fic. I have most of it written, so updates should be fairly regular.
> 
> Comments are loved and critique is always welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

Having a Harrison Wells share a work space with her is disconcerting. And after everything that’s happened – the death of her best friend’s mom, the death of Eddie, of Ronnie, of Cisco herself and probably (certainly) many others – it’s definitely within her rights to not trust a man with…well, _that_ face. After all, they don’t know anything about the different multiverses. What if Earth-2 also has an Eobard Thawne travel back in time and body-snatch their Harrison Wells? That thought alone is enough to give Cisco nightmares.

It’s been something like a week since Harry just dropped in out of nowhere and so far he’s done a lot of brooding, yelling, grouching, throwing, and general dick type behaviors.

Which, oddly enough, is the most reassuring part about the guy. And _that_ might indicate how generally messed up she is from the whole situation. But the truth is that Eobard Thawne would never have behaved in such a manner. She knows because the evil Dr. Wells never behaved like this. Whenever Dr. Wells was angry he got cold and intense. He could bring the temperature down to 0 degrees Celsius with just a stare. Icy eyes like a snake coiled up and ready for the strike. Harry’s more like a bear that has missed hibernation. Or his dinner just got away. …Or his cub disappeared. Okay, that last one is kinda sad and would totally make sense if it was true but as far as Cisco knows, Harry doesn’t have kids.

Anyways, sharing her work room with Harry is slightly terrifying but surprisingly annoying. And frustrating. And maddening and she hates it about as much she hates last season of _How I Met Your Mother_ (which is pretty high on the hate list). Especially when she’s busy working on repairs for Barry’s suit – Dr. Light had weakened the seams around the right shoulder and it just now started to unravel – and is trying really hard to ignore a _certain_ person, and then said certain person suddenly throws something that pings off the side of her head.

The sharp pain makes her jerk back in surprise. There’s a clatter as the foreign object falls to the floor. She barely recognizes the sound as she levels a harsh glare at Harry, who (of course) is glaring back from the other work table like _she_ did something wrong. He has swiveled around to face her, his lips pursed into a thin line. He looks annoyed and all around peeved about something, arms crossed and shoulders tense.

It makes her even madder because he does _not_ have the right to wear that expression after hitting _her_ in the _head._ “What the hell?” she shouts, ripping off her magnifying glasses and tossing them at her very awesome Cisco-fied sewing machine. “What was that for?”

“You were muttering,” Harry says, his voice like a tire rolling down a gravel road, “It was distracting.”

Cisco blinks. “So you just think it’s acceptable behavior to _throw_ things at someone’s head when they annoy you?”

“Would you have stopped if I’d asked you?” Harry challenges.

Cisco only has to take a second to decide that ignoring that question is the best option. There’s no need to give this jerk an unnecessary victory. So she deflects. “That still doesn’t mean you need to go around giving people brain damage,” she says firmly, and she almost feels like her mamá giving someone a lecture on proper manners. From Harry’s face, Cisco sees that she hasn’t perfected the ‘woman voice’ yet (the one every woman she knew uses to get their way) so she turns back to her work mumbling a soft _“jerk”_ under her breathe. She’ll learn it someday. Then maybe she’ll make Caitlin quake in her boots for a change.

Harry goes back to his doohickey and Cisco makes a conscious effort not to mutter less she get hit again. She really doesn’t need brain damage.

 

 

**********

 

 

It isn’t until the next day that she vibes Harry (and what do you know, he _does_ have a cub). Then they all come up with a pretty horrible plan to catch Zoom. It leads to a hard week of watching one of her best friends struggle with pain and depression as he fights for his legs. It’s really a miracle Barry is still alive, let alone on the road to recovery. Of course, telling a speedster to take it easy doesn’t go over well. But to make matters worse, Caitlin gets kidnapped by a psychic gorilla and the only idea they come up with is using Harry as a distraction.

So there they are, Cisco and Harry, striding towards the STAR Labs vans on the other side of the parking lot. Cisco is trying not to freak out because Caitlin is in mortal danger and Harry is looking every bit evil Wells. She has to focus. Focus, focus, focus. She can do this. Once they reach the vans, she stops and turns, hands clinging to the strap of her massager bag. She makes herself look into blue irises and takes a deep breath. “Harry.”

He stops, though whether it’s because of her tone or to keep from running into her, she can’t guess. He waits, his eyes searching her with the usual intensity. Doesn’t he know how to dial it down a notch? Probably not.

She continues. “Caitlin is the closest thing I have to a real family.” Harry frowns but doesn’t interrupt. Cisco takes that as a go-ahead and plows on because if she doesn’t, she won’t, “I know you probably don’t really care, I mean, I know you care _a little_ since you’re here, helping, in the first place when this has nothing to do with Zoom or your daughter, and thank you, by the way. For that. I know that you’re risking your life and all, so…thanks.”

“Ramon,” Harry says impatiently, “Get to the point.”

“Right,” she nods, “If we’re going to convince Grodd that you’re Dr. Wells, then you need to act like him. Which means you need to practice.”

“Practice?” he scoffs, “Practice what?”

Cisco makes a vague motion at him with her hand, “Practice being Dr. Wells.”

Pursing his lips, he growls, “I _am_ Dr. Wells.”

She huffs out a frustrated breath and rolls her eyes, her whole body to moving with the action. “A _version_ of Dr. Wells, but you’re not the Dr. Wells we need right now. You’re Harry. Fire and snark, not ice and cunning.”

Harry frowns, a permanent fixture on his face, it seems. “And what would you have me do?”

She blinks and stutters because she hasn’t really thought about this part. “Um, well, I guess you could practice saying some lines and we’ll go from there?”

And so that’s how they spend most of the drive. Cisco gives Harry a few lines that Dr. Wells used a lot. _Run, Barry, run. You always impress me. I would stand if I could, but…_ She hesitates before adding _in many ways, you’ve taught me what it’s like to have a daughter._ She doesn’t mention who Dr. Wells said that to but Harry seems to already know.

And apparently, it’s hard to imitate a murder psychopath. But Harry does, sort of. It only works for a moment but it’s a moment long enough for Cisco to give Caitlin the earbuds and then their running and Harry’s breathing is harsh and that’s not good.

It’s later that night while Harry is working when he should be resting and Cisco is trying to make herself enter the workshop ( _her_ workshop, damn it!), that she comes to a conclusion. Watching him, he looks so strung out and desperate. It’s not really pity or sympathy that she feels for him but more tired. She watches him and feels weary. Like the world is never going to be done with screwing people over. Maybe that’s why she steps into the room, his back to her, and offers, “I can, um…if you ever want me to, I can try to vibe Jesse for you. So you know that…that she’s okay.” Even though he’s not facing her, she can’t look at him, not even in his direction. She stares at her shoes and waits for some kind of response. She doesn’t get any.

When she leaves the room she thinks she hears a soft sob.

She never mentions it when she sees Harry the next morning. In fact, she’s pretty sure she’ll never mention it _ever_ because she understands a person who can’t let the world get to them, can’t let it win. Instead, she just sits heavily in a chair at the computer station in the Cortex and bemoans the lack of coffee. She really needs to stop pulling all-nighters and staying up late. But this time it’s all Harry’s fault she slept terribly. She spent all night tossing and turning, her mind unable to free itself from thoughts of him and that small sob. She understands what it’s like to have someone you care about in danger. In fact, all members of the team do.

Harry walks in the room, stops to stare at her, and then turns around to leave. Cisco frowns but is really too sleep deprived to come up with a better explanation other than _he’s Harry._ She’s just about to get up from the nice, comfy chair and start an expedition in search for a cup of joe, when Harry strides back into the room. He sets a cup of steaming liquid caffeine by her elbow on his way passed, not even breaking his pace. She stares at it in confusion and wants to ask, but he’s already disappearing into the medbay on an obvious quest for something.

It takes her a few seconds to decide that it’s _probably_ not drugged or anything, takes a sip and like someone pulling a string, her face scrunches up in disgust at the bitterness. This stuff was probably strong enough to make a cow clear the moon. She figures that Harry is probably watching her and having a grand old laugh at her expense. She won’t give him the satisfaction of saying anything, though. So she just gets up, cup in hand, and goes to get some sugar and creamer.

 

 

**********

 

 

It really is amazing the human’s ability to adapt. Cisco’s always thought this. Take Central City for example. It’s been a little more than a year since metahumans had started popping up and most people have been taking it in fairly even stride. Sure, a lot of people were scared but it didn’t take long for this to be another one of those things you just avoided, like the bad parts of town or suspicious characters. She thinks that the Flash has helped a lot with that. People feel safer knowing that there _are_ metahumans out there willing to help them.

Another example would be the team. When they first started this whole superhero team thing, there had been a _lot_ of things to adapt too: Barry’s metabolism, freaky metas coming out of the woodwork, people you thought were dead suddenly not being dead, trying to keep it all a secret (she’s never been good with secrets). The list had seemed endless at the time. Even now, there are things that need getting used to that she’s starting to get the hang of. Her powers, Iris on the team, her work at CCPD (and having that work actually be respected for a change), not having that person around to give you fatherly advice when you really think you could use some. Or blind you with their brilliance. As much as Dr. Wells’ betrayal hurt and makes her want to throw something, it really is harder to come up with solutions without him.

Then Harry came and sort of filled that empty chair. It’s not an exact fit. The sleeves are too long and the shoulders are too tight, but it works for now and Harry is here blinding them with his brilliance. It’s surprisingly easy to get used to him after she realizes that he’s _not_ an evil speedster from the future and can’t vibrate his hand through her chest. He’s rude and blunt and he throws things but Cisco is used to adapting (has been her whole life) and decides to be rude and blunt back. She’s had plenty of practice dealing with grade A jerks.

Of course, now that some time has passed, the animosity has faded into harmless banter somewhere along the way and she’s still not sure when that is but now this _thing_ is a whole different kind of relationship that she’s not used to. Normally, when she doesn’t like someone, it stays that way. Hartley is the perfect example, even though they’ve come to a sort of truce. She still doesn’t like him and can only handle him in (very) small doses. She’s never had an 'enemy turn friend' and isn’t sure what goes and what doesn’t. She watches the _Original Star Trek_ , studying the McCoy/Spock dynamic. _Stargate: Atlantis_ is another she’s been refreshing herself on, skipping to all the parts between Rodney and his friends, specifically Sheppard. _Hawaii Five-O_ is next on the list. She’s never seen it but she’s a whiz at pop culture and knows that Steve and Dano are snarky best friends. She knows that this would be a good time to have that father figure, but Joe already has enough problems to deal with and her insecurities aren’t really important.

She thinks that someone should write a guide book for dummies about bickering friendships. Maybe _she_ will.

She’s working on one of the building generators in the basement when things become even more confusing. The generator is tall, reaching up to the ceiling. It’s been tinkered on by one of the employees who used to work for the STAR Labs. She suspects it was a night shift engineer (they tended to get bored a lot). And while whatever they did has worked really great in the meantime, it makes fixing the damn thing a lot harder. She’s pretty much had to gut the generator to find the problem, taking the add-ons and modifiers and whats-its and _what-the-hells_ out one at a time. Her legs are tangled around the ladder that’s situated to the left of the panel she’s removed and her upper body is submerged inside the belly of the beast. She’s dressed in the grey jumpsuit she keeps around for these occasions and her hair is fighting to come out of the ponytail holder, a few victorious strands tickling her nose. She’s covered in grease and grim and sweat and dirt and dust and…

And she’s cussing up a storm when Harry finds her because she has just dropped her flashlight and now its wedged between the fuel supply line and the generator wall and her arms are _short_ so she can’t _reach_. She’s trying though. Her fingers brush against the blue metal. The light from torch is bouncing off the walls and machine parts and glinting off everything.

“Lose something?” Harry’s voice asks from outside the open panel. It makes her jump a bit and gasp, banging her hand on something _hard_ and she curses again. She hears a low chuckle.

“Shut up,” she says, then mutters, “Smug jerk.”

She repositions herself. Even with all of the parts she dismantled, there isn’t a lot of room. If she snakes her body to the left, she can get a new angle around the fuel line. She leans in a little more, the edge of the panel opening digging into her lower abdomen painfully and her head is pressing awkwardly against the motor, but she’s almost got it. She stretches her arm and fingers and… _gotcha._ She grins in triumph. It's sort lived though, because the stupid flashlight is stuck. She gives it a hard tug. It doesn’t budge. She shifts for a better grip and better leverage and _pulls_. With a wicked screech, it comes free.

And so does Cisco right out of the generator, hitting her head on the top of the panel opening in the process. She’s scrambling for something to stop her fall and only has time to say _“Shit!”_ before she’s suddenly landing in someone’s strong arms. Harry catches her with a loud grunt and he stumbles a little from the sudden weight. Cisco’s head is pounding and her breathe is ragged from panic and she’s still trying to catch up to the fact that she’s _not_ on the floor right now. Then she makes the mistake of looking at Harry and notices his eyes.

Where they always that shade of blue? She feels like she’s drowning in the ocean, like she’s under water looking up at the sun as it shimmers in the waves. Or watching a star go supernova.

When he puts her down, she’s pretty sure she’s blushing because it suddenly gets really hot. He leaves the room without a word, making her wonder why he was even there in the first place.

The next morning she sits at Joe’s desk (because she may be avoiding Harry a little) waiting for him to come back from wherever so she can fill him in on her new and improved Kevlar vest prototype that should be able to absorb ten times more impact. Instead of Joe, she gets Julian. He comes in holding a file and looking around the bullpen. Probably looking for Joe too. He spots her instead. As he reaches the desk were Cisco is lazily spinning circles in Joe’s chair, he places the file on the wooden surface and nods to the vest in her lap.

“Miss Ramon, a new invention, I take it?”

She nods with a smile and, because Joe _isn’t_ here, she tells Julian about the improvements she made. And it’s nice and easy because he only knows her through their work at the precinct. It’s like Julian is a clean slate and there’s nothing complicated to smudge it up. She’s just there showing off her skill and Julian actually looks impressed. It’s nice to have that now and then.

When Joe finally shows up, he looks super busy as he heads to Captain Singh’s office. So Cisco sighs, slings the vest over her shoulder, gives Julian a small wave, and leaves. She’ll show Joe later. The vest needs more testing anyway.

 

 

**********

 

 

That super-weird-maybe-friendship thing with Harry doesn’t really improve but it does become familiar. That’s something, at least. It’s Christmas Day and Cisco walks into her workshop at around noon. Harry is there, of course, and it really isn’t surprising that he’s working instead of resting because he’d been _shot_ only, like, a week ago. But she’s not his doctor, Caitlin is, and Cisco has given up on telling Harry what to do (she’ll keep an eye on him, though, because he still looks pale).

He gives her a blank look before turning back to the computer screen. “Why are you here?” he asks sharply.

She frowns because that was a little harsher than normal and she wonders if maybe she did something wrong. Her steps turn hesitant as she makes her way to a workbench, across the room from Harry.

“Um, to work?” she says, though it comes out as a question. She gives him a weird look.

He looks irritated. “No, why aren’t you celebrating, Ramon?” She suddenly gets the feeling that she interrupted something.

“Merry Christmas to you too, Harry,” she snarks back. Harry must be in a particular mood today. But given the situation – Jesse still in danger and it being Christmas – she’s willing to give the guy a pass. Everyone deserves a pass every now and then, right? It doesn’t help that she’s already in a bad mood too. Family get-togethers never got easier it seems.

“Ramon,” Harry hisses and he looks like he’s about to throw something again.

“Fine,” Cisco snaps, leaning on the workbench with both hands, it’s covered in the leftover pieces from the portal gun, “You want to know _why_ I’m here? Okay. It’s because everyone I know already has plans and families that they actually _like_ spending a whole day with. And the two people I _normally_ would celebrate Christmas with are a dead evil speedster from the future and Caitlin who feels bad for wanting to spend a whole day alone with Jay, but I’m an understanding friend so I tell her I’ll go see my family. Which ends in everyone making fun of me in those passive-aggressive _subtle_ ways that make you feel unwelcome without anyone actually saying they don’t want you there. So I leave and save them the trouble. And yet, I don’t want to be alone on Christmas so I’d rather suffer in _your_ company than go home to an empty apartment.” By the end her breathing is harsh, ragged breaths but, thankfully, there are no tears. Just a deep simmering anger.

Harry is frowning at her, pursing him lips like he’s about to do something against his better judgement. “Fine,” he says, turning back to the monitor, “You can stay.” Like it’s _his_ workshop.

Cisco rolls her eyes but she’s still giving him that pass. Why? She doesn’t know really. He’s definitely hasn’t earned it in her opinion.

They spend the day working in silence, each stuffed so far up in their own heads that they barely register the other’s presence. It’s her phone ringing out the Darth Vader theme that brings her back to reality. Harry is giving her a glare but she ignores it because Harry is always glaring at something. Besides, there’s a certain group of people Cisco has assigned that ringtone to and she really, _really_ doesn’t want to answer. But she does.

She looks at the clock before she answers. Why the hell is Dante calling her at 11:31 at night? He normally goes to bed around 10:00 like an old man.

_“Yes?”_ she asks in Spanish, so Harry couldn’t eavesdrop. Unless he knew Spanish.

 _“Hello, Cisco, I…”_ Dante pauses and he sounds almost guilty about something, _“Look. I am…sorry. About today.”_

_“You are what?”_ she says in disbelief. She takes a quick glance at the phone screen to confirm that, yes, she’s still talking to her brother. _“Did Mamá tell you to apologize?”_  Which would be weird since…

 _“You know she never apologizes for anything,”_ Dante replies and Cisco is kinda glad she’s not the only one who’s a little bitter about that.

_“So why…?”_ Cisco trails off. She thinks that this might be the first time Dante’s apologized without being told to.

_“I guess I was just thinking about when we were younger. Do you remember when you used to follow me around in your diaper and pretend you were Wonder Woman? You were always trying to save me from the neighbor’s cat. You told me it was an evil henchman of Catwoman’s.”_

Cisco smiles. She doesn’t really remember a time she hasn’t love superheroes. _“I remember trying to build a suit like Ironman’s with the slingshot and some dinner plates.”_

Dante’s laugh is genuine and warm and Cisco is still trying to figure out where all of this came from. _“Mamá was so angry. I thought you would be grounded forever.”_

There’s a moment of silence where she tries to think of something to say because this is actually nice instead of excruciating. She wonders when it was that her brother became a stranger and whether it might be partly her fault. She hadn’t actually stuck around after high school. She’s about to ask, about to start a conversation that she doesn’t really know if she wants to have...

But Dante’s talking and the question rolls back into her mouth. _“I guess I just wanted to make sure you were alright. Today was bad and I am sorry.”_

Cisco doesn’t know _what_ to say, so she settles for mumbling, _“No big deal.”_

Dante doesn’t seem to agree, which _that’s_ not unusual. _“No, Cisco. You are family. I need to remember that more often.”_

After they hang up, Cisco wonders what it is Dante thinks if he needs to remind himself of that. She never has any problems remembering that he’s her brother. Even if he’s only her half-brother. She wonders if Dante looks at her the same way Mamá does (the mistake). Or the way Papá does (the sign of Mamá betrayal). Cisco’s had many people ask why she doesn’t really look like her parents, with only glimpses of her mother peeking out here and there.

Harry is trying to hide the fact that he’s been watching her. She doesn’t feel like talking about it. But suddenly, there _is_ something she needs to do because this is a holiday for family and she's not the only one alone here.

She gets up and walks over to Harry. He’s typing something and his movement become almost frantic when he sees her approach. She catches a glance of something being minimized on his screen but she doesn’t bother to ask. He’s looking at her now, his eyes sharp and tense and _in_ tense and something else. Cisco licks her lips and Harry’s eyes flicker to them and she doesn’t know why (she actually, really does) but it makes her blush. Her eyes fall to look at his hands. She had been touching his hands the last time she vibed him.

Tentatively, she reaches out, her fingers wrapping around his palm. She closes her eyes and _concentrates_.

The blue rushes in and she opens her eyes and lets it. She sees what she’s looking for immediately. The girl, Jesse, is sitting in a corner of her cell. She still looks scared, still looks _terrified_ , but Cisco can hear the words of a song floating through the air like snowflakes. The tune sounds identical to _I’ll be Home for Christmas_ but the words are different.

_“You’ll be home for Christmas. Don’t you worry, dear. I have faith and the greatest trust that you will make it here…”_

The voice is shaky and small and beautiful. And Cisco has to stop the vibe before she starts to cry. She can’t stand the sound of a child crying out for their parent (because she can understand that kind of loneliness).

Coming back to the real world is like breaking the surface of a pool. She leaves the world of blue and flickering lights behind for the clear air of reality. When her eyes focus, she’s gazing into Harry’s irises again and thinks it’s strange how the lighting makes them look grey when she knows they’re blue like the sky on a clear day. Right now, though, they look overcast, like it’s going to rain. She has to lower her eyes before she gets sucked up into them.

She removes her hand and say lowly while she’s backing away, “She has a pretty voice. And…she’s not giving up.” She adds that last part as an afterthought, what she almost says is _she’s waiting for her papá_. She doesn’t clarify who she’s talking about because Harry knows already. She wants to comfort him because she knows having the people you care about in danger is one of the worst feelings ever. You feel helpless and hopeless.

“Merry Christmas, Harry,” she whispers as she leaves the room because she _wants_ to comfort him but she knows he won’t allow himself to be comforted. The best thing she can do is give him space so he can deal with it on his own.

She falls asleep in the Cortex running tests on their system’s firewall, humming the tune for one of the melancholiest Christmas songs in history. And wakes up back in her workshop, curled up on the cot she keeps crammed in a corner. There’s a mug of lukewarm coffee sitting on a chair that has been rolled up to the side. When she takes a sip, it’s just as nasty as before. Maybe Harry likes it like this? Well, she doesn’t. So she’s off again to the kitchen to warm the coffee back up and fix it the way she likes it.

There’s a small grin playing at the corners of her mouth for the rest of the morning.

 

 

**********

 

 

Caitlin has been giving her weird looks ever since Christmas. Cisco is not sure what to think about that.

They’re eating lunch at this new Greek restaurant Iris told them about. It’s alright, nothing really amazing. But she’s not really paying attention to the food because Caitlin has this _look_. It’s the one she always wears when she’s about to ask Cisco a question that is very personal and probably true despite how much Cisco might wish it weren’t. Caitlin has the eyes of a scientist, that’s for sure. She observes everything within her testing zone. Not much outside of that, though.

Sadly, Cisco is within that testing zone.

“So, you and Harry…” Caitlin starts only to leave the question implied.

Cisco frowns, her spoon pausing just outside her mouth, and asks, “What about me and Harry?”

Caitlin smiles at her like she’s cute and not fooling anyone. Cisco is wondering where on Earth (any Earth) her friend is getting such a crazy idea. “What?” Cisco asks and it comes out a little more defensive than she would like.

“Well,” Caitlin says, drawing out the word, “I’ve been noticing that you two are getting along _pretty_ well.”

“Uh, I think you need glasses,” Cisco replies.

“You guys are spending a lot of time together lately.”

“We work together, of _course_ we’re going to spend a lot of time together.”

“He seems a lot nicer to you than to anyone else.”

Cisco shakes her head because _that_ can’t be true. “He must be treating you guys _terribly_ if that’s the case. You do know that he throws things at me, right?”

Caitlin smiles that knowing smile, “You’ve told me. And I’ve _also_ noticed that you complain about him less.”

Cisco tries a nonchalant shrug that probably wouldn’t fool her 90-year-old blind grandmother. “Maybe we’re just becoming friends?” Which, actually, is true. She and Harry have grown closer over the months he’s been here. If there have been moments when she’s felt like she was suffocating in his presence or that she might burst like a balloon full of stardust just from a glance or small touch…well, not every friendship she has with a guy will be as easy as it is with Barry. Sexual tension is normal, right? Maybe she should ask Joe, but…then again, he might not want to hear about this kind of problem from her.

Caitlin is shaking her head, that cute _you’re-in-denial_ expression coloring her face amused. But she doesn’t bring it up for the rest of the meal. She does, however, annoy Cisco with meaningful glances and subtle gestures for the whole day.

Joe comes in later that day with a tin full of cookies and a sad look that he’s trying to hide. Cisco knows it’s about Iris so she drags him off to the help her fix one of the vans which is acting up. They talk about cars and music and she has him laughing so hard at one point he has to sit down. When the van is fixed and they’ve cleaned everything up, Joe gives her a thankful look because of course he knew the whole time.

She catches Barry watching them with a fond smile before he speeds off in a flash of yellow lightning.

It’s not until the next day, while she PMSing and chomping down on Joe’s cookies like it’s her only way to live through vicious mood swings, that she realizes she may be falling in love with Harry.

She pulls out a piece of paper and makes a list because doing that has always helped her organize her easily scattered thoughts.

_Things that are attractive about Harry:_

  1. _eyes_
  2. _smile (when he actually does)_
  3. _strong arms_
  4. _intelligent_
  5. _~~strong hands~~ strong_
  6. _the hair isn’t that bad_
  7. _looks good in black_
  8. _has this soft look whenever he talks about Jesse_
  9. _nicer than he used to be_
  10. _it’s kinda fun to bicker with him_
  11. _sometimes when he looks at me I get butterflies_
  12. _probably would feel safe in his arms_
  13. _lips look soft_



Cisco crumbles up the list and throws it away, trying to push the image of Harry’s lips from her mind. What is she thinking? Seriously, there is no way it’ll ever work out. She _knows_ this. Can feel it somehow.

She makes a new list.

_Reasons why it won’t work and why you’re stupid for hoping it would:_

  1. _he’s twenty something years older than you_
  2. _that means he’ll think you’re too young_
  3. _seriously, he has a daughter almost your age_
  4. _he’s way out of your league_
  5. _rich_
  6. _smarter_
  7. _probably thinks you’re immature_
  8. _you are immature_
  9. _finds you annoying – he’s said it lots of times_
  10. _think of your track record_
  11. _he’ll probably sprout wings and have a 4000-year-old girlfriend (or boyfriend)_
  12. _yes that happened and with your luck it’ll happen again_
  13. _you’re a loser_
  14. _you really should just get used to being alone_



Cisco looks at the list. With a sigh, she adds:

  1. _and I will probably become an alcoholic in the near future_



She keeps this list. Stores it in a drawer with a lock Harry hasn’t cracked yet. Despite his efforts.

She takes out the trash on her way to the closest decent bar (can’t have anyone accidentally finding that list). There she drowns her sorrows and laments her horrible luck with love. Was happiness too much to ask for? Maybe it was. But she was happy here, at STAR Labs with the team, happier than she’s ever been anywhere else. And she’ll never be truly lonely with the friends she has.

But was it too much to ask for? Finding _that_ person. Was that too much want for? Disney would tell you no, but real life is definitely a different kind of fairy tale.

She sighs heavily as she takes a sip from her beer.

“Cisco?” a familiar voice comes from behind her and there’s a hand sliding up her arm when she looks to see Lisa Snart smirking at her. “Now, what is a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Having a beer,” Cisco says, raising her glass a little. She doesn’t even bother giving the other woman a smile. She may be a little bit drunk.

“At 1:30 in the afternoon?” Lisa asks, quirking an eyebrow.

“You’re here,” Cisco points out.

“ _I’m_ here to meet a client,” Lisa says and she doesn’t even _try_ to make that sound less shady. Cisco likes that about her.

“Yeah, well, just because it’s the afternoon doesn’t mean I don’t have things I’d like to forget,” Cisco says before draining the rest of her beer. She asks the bartender for another, raising a questioning eyebrow at Lisa.

Lisa declines the offer for a beer. Her sly smile has turned into something less smug and a little more sympathetic. “I still have two hours before my client arrives. Do you want to talk about it?”

It takes two seconds for Cisco to start talking. Lisa doesn’t have much in the way of advice other than _“why don’t you just make him hard and needy, then jump him? Guys are easy to play like that”_ which is really terrible but makes Cisco laugh very hard. And it feels good to laugh about it. It makes it seem like it’s less of an issue. Like she’s watching a movie and the female protagonist is struggling with _emotions_ and _feelings_ and her friend is sitting beside her all kinds of crude snark.

Then Lisa’s client walks in and she’s giving Cisco a friendly pat on the arm, saying, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You’re a smart gal.”

She’s gone and Cisco wonders if the other woman is wrong. Sure, she knows she’s smart but when it comes to romantic endeavors, she’s like a newborn foal floundering around trying to stand up and walk like the rest of the adults.

There’s no guide book for dummies. She sighs.

She’s still there two hours later and Lisa is back, giving her a lift home.

When she looks at her phone she sees that there are three messages and one voicemail. They’re all from Caitlin. Cisco has Lisa send a text saying _having girl problems took the rest of the day off_ because her fingers aren’t working right. Lisa tucks Cisco into bed and kisses her on the forehead. It’s such a motherly thing to do and she wonders if Lisa’s mom did that for her.

The next morning comes too fast and Cisco is almost sad Lisa didn’t stay. It’d be nice to wake up next to someone, she thinks. And maybe Lisa isn’t the person she wants to wake up next to but she’s still PMSing and this feeling in her heart is going to take some time to fade. She knows this.

That night she has a sleepover at Caitlin’s and they watch _Downtown Abby_ because it’s Caitlin’s turn to pick. They fall asleep curled up together on the couch with polish still drying on their nails and the show running into the next season.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know. I promised more regular updates, but I was trying to proof read and I just kept adding more content. I hope you guys like the end result, since you had to wait for it. Also, I don't have a beta reader, so please forgive any grammatical mistakes as I'm sure there are some. I've read through it many times but somehow you always miss something.

 

 

  “You braided your hair,” Harry says by way of greeting.

  Cisco’s hand automatically reaches up to feel one of the French braided pigtails.  She’s surprised Harry said something at all and it makes her feel subconscious.  Barry said they look nice this morning when she came in but she thinks they make her look twelve.  “Caitlin did it,” she says like some kind of excuse or accusation.  Like she doesn’t want Harry to be reminded of how big the age difference is between them (she really doesn’t).  The age thing doesn’t matter to her.  She’s always had a thing for older guys but that doesn’t mean all older guys have a thing for younger women.  And at the same time, she’s trying to tell herself that all this noise in her head, making her blush when Harry walks by or stutter when he touches her, is unrequited.  It has to be.  She kept the list of reasons why.  She has to remind herself.

  Harry is looking at her, something in his eyes soften and then the moment is gone.  He’s turning back to the erase board, seemingly dismissing the event entirely.  She tries not to be disappointed.

  She takes out the list, later that day, and reminds herself why it won’t work and why she’s stupid for wishing it would.

  It goes on like that for about a week.  He looks at her, eyes soft and lips quirked, and there are _so_ many times that she wants to kiss him but that would be _very_ bold of her and she’s never been all that bold when it comes to romance.  Kendal is the only guy she’s ever asked out and that was mostly out of peer-pressure from Barry.  And Kendal left her for his 4000-year-old boyfriend (and that never stops sucking so much) so that probably indicates her poor choice in boyfriends.  But she’s never been good at _not_ falling in love.  She’d honestly like to meet someone who was so she could pick their brains.

  Then the Reverse-Flash comes back (don’t panic, don’t panic) and she almost vibes out of existence (panicking, okay, she’s panicking now).  She isn’t really aware of much going on in the outside world because she’s drowning in the world of blue.  It’s like wading in a strong current that’s trying to sweep her away.  She can see events and people that can’t all be on her Earth.  They swarm around her, tempting her, trying to lead her away.  Like hooks, they scratch and scrap at her, trying to real her into places she doesn’t belong.  They try to get her to come closer.  She doesn’t.  She fights.  Digs her heels in and _refuses_ because she may not be completely aware right now but she knows she has something to hold onto, something she needs to stay for.  She hears Harry’s voice and focuses on that.  _Holds onto that._

  When she wakes up, it’s to a splitting headache and a room full of worried boys.  And it’s heartening to know that she matters more to Barry than his revenge.  It’s like a breath of fresh air.  Then Joe and Barry are gone and Harry leaves to get food.  Despite being very hungry, she dozes off wishing at least one of them had stayed with her to make sure she didn’t disappear or something.  It’s a terrifying thought and she wakes up drenched in sweat after dreaming about being trapped in places she doesn’t belong.  The medbay is dark, with only a few lights on, and she still feels the tendrils of her dream wrapping around her chest and _squeezing_.  Her breath is coming out in gasps and she can’t seem to calm down because she’s having trouble distinguishing dream from reality.  She can’t shake the feeling that she died and she left behind the place, the _something_ , she needed to stay for.  Which means she needs to find Caitlin.  Because Caitlin’s a doctor and she would know if Cisco is dead or not.

  She scrambles to get out of bed, pulling out any and all wires, ignoring the pain because she can barely feel it over the panicked fog in her brain.  A pair of hands stop her from getting more than one leg over the edge and she panics.  “No!” she yells and tries to pull free, “No, I need to find Caitlin.  Caitlin!”

  “Ramon, stop,” she hears the person bark at her.  She turns to face the person and sees black rimmed glasses and a firm jaw.  Harry.  Harry’s smart.  He’s not that kind of doctor but she thinks that he would know.

  “Harry,” she says urgently, latching onto his shirt sleeves, “Am I dead?  _P-please_ , tell me I’m not dead.”

  “Dead?” Harry blurts, looking confused and a little disturbed, “Ramon, _what_ are you talking about?”

  She tries to explain but her words come out about as scrambled as her thoughts, “The, the vibes, no, the _multiverse_ , it was calling to me.  Trying to pull me away.  I, I, I saw worlds…and it, it, I…I need to know that _this_ is where I’m supposed to be.  I need to know I’m alive and, and that this is _real_.  I need to know if this is real.”

  Harry grabs her by the shoulders and levels her with a gaze so intense that she feels in run down her spin.  “This is real,” he tells her, “Ramon.  This is real.  You’re alive and this is right where you’re supposed to be.”

  “But-,” she starts to argue because she still can’t focus, still feels like the world is humming and it’s never done that _before_ so why is it doing it _now?_   Unless she’s dead or this isn’t real and she’s still trapped wherever she had been trapped or she was pulled here and she should be somewhere else, or-

  “Ramon,” Harry says, interrupting her panicked thoughts, “Listen to my voice.”  Yes.  Yeah, that’s right.  Follow Harry’s voice.  Follow it home…  Listen to the low rumble it makes when he says, “Feel the bed under you.  Take a deep breath.”  She does.  “Feel the rush of air in your lungs.”  He takes her hand and places it on his chest, over his heart.  “Can you feel my heart beating?”  She nods.  “Does it feel real?”  She nods again.  “That’s because it _is_ real.  You’re not dead.  You supposed to be here.  Barry saved you when he sent the Reverse-Flash back to his time.  You’re safe now.”

  She closes her eyes.  Real.  Real.  Real.  This is real.  She concentrates on the steady _thrum thrum thrum_ underneath her fingertips.  The way his voice sounds like a blender when he’s tired and is running on zero hours of sleep.  Which is about 99.9 percent of the time.  There’s a warmth seeping into her shoulder from his hand.

  She’s not sure how long they stay there.  How long it takes for her mind to clear, the frantic confusion filtering away.  Like a school of fish zigzagging out of view.  She feels like she can breathe now and the hum is gone and now that she can _think_ she realizes that Harry is very close.  And her hand is still placed over his heart.  And he’s looking at her.  And she’s blushing and wishing she could sink through the bed.  He looks like he’s about to say something, his mouth parting and his chest expanding under her hand as he takes in a breath…

  Then Caitlin is rushing in.  “Harry?  What’s wrong?” she asks Harry before her attention flitters to Cisco.  She’s in full doctor mode when she makes it to the bed.  “Cisco, tell me what wrong.  What hurts?  Is it your head?”

  Cisco then suffers through a full medical exam, because Caitlin will take nothing less than thoroughness to satisfy herself.  Harry disappears in the process and Cisco feels cold because he seems to radiate warmth and safety.

  When she’s released from Caitlin’s care, she immediately sets about forming a distraction.  Reading through the list of reasons why she’s pathetic for wanting something she can’t have is a good distraction.  It reinforces her resolve, makes her confident that she can overcome this.  She can get over Harry.  She can.

  Until she gets her hair tangled in one of her drones.  It hurts and she may have tears brimming her eyes, but she doesn’t say a word as Harry gently and patiently tugs the strands free.  She refuses to cut it.  It isn’t up for debate.  Caitlin hovers in the background for a bit, all kinds of doe-eyed sympathy, before she’s called away by Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome.  Otherwise known as Jay.  Cisco shoos her friend away with a hand wave and a reassuring smile.

  So it’s just her and Harry now.  She’s sitting in a chair, her body and neck bent at an awkward angle so the drone can rest on a workbench.  A big chunk of hair on the right side of her head is wrapped around one of the drone’s propellers.  All of her hair _not_ in the tangled mess is pulled back in a ponytail holder on the left side of her head.  Harry is bending over her head, his breath warming her left ear, and she can feel his body pressing close against her back whenever he leans in for a closer look.  He’s currently taking the drone apart so it’ll be easier to untangle her hair.

  She winces when he pulls something loose and tugs her hair a little roughly.  “Sorry,” he mutters.  She just stays quiet.  She doing a mental run down of her list.  She’s on number seven.  _Probably thinks you’re immature.  You_ are _immature.  Finds you-_   Then he interrupts by asking, “Exactly _how_ did you do this to yourself, Ramon?”  He sounds irritated and grumpy and it’s a sharp contrast to his gentle fingers.  If it didn’t hurt some much, she knows that she’d fall asleep.  She loves it when people mess with her hair.

  She hisses at another sharp jerk and he responds by moving his fingers slower and more carefully.  She feels him pause in his work and that’s when she realizes he’s expecting an answer.  “Um,” she starts, her face heating up with embarrassment, “The drone was acting up and I was checking the propellers and I…just…got too close.”

  Harry snorts softly.  She hears the _clink_ of another drone part being tossed to the side.  “Have you never heard of hair ties, Ramon?”

  She frowns at the sarcastic tone.  “I was just running a diagnostic.  I don’t need to pull my hair back for that.”

  “ _Apparently_ you do.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve done it _many_ times before and never _once_ had a problem.  I can’t account for all the variables.”

  “You’re a scientist, Ramon.  You’re supposed to account for all the variables.”

 “Well, yeah, but I had a lot of evidence to supporting my theory.”

  “And what was your theory?”

  “That I’d be fine without a hair tie, obviously,” she says, waving a hand in the air.  It falls back into her lap with a _plop_.  “How was I supposed to know that _this_ time doing something so mundane would cause me so much pain?”

  “Always be prepared, Ramon,” Harry replies, another _clink_ punctuating his point.

  “What, are you a boy scout now or something?”

  “Marine,” he says matter of fact, “Always expect the worst.  Always be prepared.  It’s our motto.”

  “Wait, you were in the military?” she asks.  And that makes the world of sense, really.  The way he totes around that blaster of his…it’s nothing but professional.  His aim is nothing to sneeze at, either.  He’s hit her in the head enough times for her to know.

  “For two tours,” he informs, “One in Vietnam and the other in Brazil.  It’s required in the US for every able bodied man to serve.”

  “For real?” she says, “Man, am _I_ glad I’m not a boy on your Earth.  _Ouch.”_ She jumps a little at the pain.

  “Stop moving,” he commands.

  Right.  No moving.  They lapse into silence.  Harry leans closer, his stomach pressing into her shoulder blade.  She can feel the muscle that hides under black fabric and she closes her eyes and runs the list through her head.  _Finds you annoying – he’s said it lots of times.  Think of your track record.  He’ll probably sprout wings and…_

  It’s a small miracle that Harry doesn’t get frustrated and cut Cisco’s hair down to the roots.  When she’s finally free, he runs his fingers through the tangled, kinky mess the right side of her head has become and it’s almost most tender.  That’s how she knows that she hallucinating or something.  She’d probably just projecting her feelings into every little action he makes.  Yeah.  That’s probably it.

  It’s almost eight and so she leaves for home, needing some distance.  She thinks that this whole thing is a mess already and damn her womanly hormones.  She might not be getting over Harry after all and that makes her down every beer she owns.

  She tries for another distraction the next day.  Steering clear of every drone she owns, she spends the whole day pouring over her bullet proof vest for the CCPD.  She’s a little surprised no one interrupts her with important metahuman stuff or even just something they need her to do for them.  It’s nice to have a day to herself.  Even Harry doesn’t bother her.  Just lurks at the edges of the room, busy with his own project.  Whatever _that_ is.

  She plugs her earbuds in and lets her playlist run wild.   She gets lost in sounds of her music, her newly created alloy, the blue print designs.  All of it plays like a balm to her stressful, hectic life and she makes two vests just because she can.

  It’s dark outside when she straightens from the workbench, satisfied.  Now comes the testing part.

  In the garage, she rigs up the gun (the one Joe insisted they have) to a machine that’ll fire the weapon when she presses a button.  She would do it herself, but she knows her aim won’t be precise enough for accurate data collection.  She puts one of the vests on a fashion mannequin she found and outfitted with shock sensors.  Then she places it on the X marks the spot she taped on the cement floor, about ten feet from the gun nozzle.  She puts on her protective gear, ear mufflers and goggles, then takes a deep breath and crosses her fingers.  “Sorry, Buster,” she tells the mannequin, “But it’s for science.”  She presses the button.

  The vest holds up better than she could have hoped and she spends an hour shooting it up in various spots, testing all the different angles and how many times one spot can get hit before becoming too fragile, before she’s confident enough to try a human target.

  This is how Harry finds her:

  The second vest secured snuggly around her torso.  Hand clamped around a remote trigger button.  Eyes closed.  Chest puffed out in shaky courage.  She vaguely hears the sound of a van pulling into the garage but she’s too focused on not quaking in her shoes to really take notice.   She knows the vest will protect her but she can’t stop the fear that the _one time_ she tests it on something living, is the one time something will go wrong.  She takes a deep breath…

  And presses the button.  The sound of the gun seems louder than before and it echoes off the cement, almost drowning out the screamed, _“NO!”_

  The bullet hits her square in the chest, forcing the air out of her lungs.  She’s pretty sure this is what it’s like to get hit by a freight train.  And in the span of a second, she’s laying sprawled out on her back, coughing and wheezing.  And okay, she’s glad she’s an engineer, because if _this_ is what it’s like being shot _with_ protection, she doesn’t want to know what it’s like _without_ it.  She definitely needs to add some improvements to the vest.

  Suddenly hands are on her and she’s staring up at a very worried Harry.  “Cisco?  Are you hurt?  Where are you hurt?”  He’s running his hands over the vest and she sees the moment he realizes that it’s bullet proof.  And that she was testing it on herself.  “What the _hell_ are you doing, Ramon?”  And there’s the anger.

  “Science?” she chokes out, voice strained with pain and a slight struggle to breath.

  The outburst Harry dishes out to her right then and there is a sight to behold.  It’s full of rage and just enough residual fear that Cisco feels like she’s a little kid again.  Of course, she’s grown a mouth since then and the scolding turns into a flow blown fight after he insults her intelligence _just_ the right way.  Like he actually believes she’s stupid despite all the times she’s proven otherwise.  It ends with Harry stomping off and Cisco angrily packing up her work.

  They don’t speak to each other for the next two days and _everyone_ notices.  Caitlin get her to talk and Cisco receives _another_ rant about safety procedures and everything she already knows.  Seriously.  Do they think she has a death wish?  She wonders if she’ll ever live this one down.  She probably won’t.  Caitlin bullies her into checking the bruise on her chest from the bullet impact, which has turned a nice shade of purple over the past few days.  Then Caitlin tells Cisco that _she_ should apologize for probably scaring Harry half to death.  Like it’s _her_ fault he walked in on her in the middle of testing.  But Caitlin uses that scary ‘woman’s tone’ and Cisco does what she asks.

  Harry’s ignoring her, his focus on the erase board.  It has an equation on it that Cisco not really sure what it’s for.  She’s standing behind him, arms crossed (because she’s still mad) and feet shuffling.  “Hey,” she starts and it sounds a bit harsh so she actively tries to make her tone more apologetic.  It doesn’t work all that well.  “Look, I’m sorry I scared you.  And that I called you a bitter old man that doesn’t care about anyone else.”  Because she _knows_ that’s not true and she should apologize for it.  He may not act like he cares, but she’s seen that he does.  She adds, “And I probably shouldn’t have said that your mom probably doesn’t even like you.  Or that she probably left you on someone’s doorstep.”  And okay, she might feel guilty for saying those things (and more) and she might miss him despite still being mad and that’s probably the worst thing about this whole situation.

  Because it means that she’s getting to the point of no return and she doesn’t want that.  Couldn’t handle that.  She knows this.  Harry doesn’t feel the same way and she’s only setting herself up for heartbreak.  She _knows_ this.  It’s like watching a car come towards you in a nightmare.  You see it but you can’t move.  You tell yourself to _run, damn it!_   You feel a rush of panic because it’s coming, coming, _coming closer_.  But you can’t move or you’re moving too slow and it hits you and you wake up.  Except there’s no waking up after heartbreak.  And the whole time you ask yourself why on earth didn’t you _move?_

  Harry doesn’t turn towards her.  Instead he asks her a question about the equation, a question he probably already knows the answer to, and she understands this as his way of saying _I’m sorry too._   They spend the rest of the day pouring over numbers.

  It’s three days later that he tells the team he’s been working with Zoom and stealing Barry’s speed.  It hurts more than it should because she should’ve already been expecting it.  Since when has someone with _that_ face actually ever cared about them?  And yeah, she’s knows that’s not fair.  Harry was being blackmailed, essentially.  And he seems to care enough that he risked his daughter’s life by confessing to his crimes, by choosing to _not_ do what Zoom wants anymore.

  Still.  He should have told them.

  She’s in her workshop making a list of things she might need for the trip to Earth-2 when Harry walks in.  She doesn’t notice him until he’s looming over her like a giant praying mantis, all elbows and joints.  Her head snaps up from the paper and pen to look up at him but she can only hold his gaze for a few seconds before she’s back to writing, trying not to blush at his close proximity because she’s supposed to be mad.  She wonders why can’t she just be angry at him.  Wonders why it has to be so complicated when it comes to him.

  “Yeah?” she asks, her voice hard and she tries to not be sorry for it.  Damn it.

  “You think you’ll need Twizzlers?” he asks lightly, ignoring her tone as he reads the words on the paper.

  She pauses and bits her lip.  “Yeah.  Just in case.  They’re high in sugar and Barry might need them if we run out power bars.  Plus, they’re his favorite.”  She doesn’t look up, doesn’t want to see whatever expression Harry is wearing.  Probably a mocking smirk or a scowl.  He wears those like person wears their favorite socks.  All the damn time.

  “They’re for Barry?” he says, sounding surprised and a little skeptical.

  “Well, any one of us that might need them,” she mumbles.  It’s true, she really likes Twizzlers too and she might really need some comfort food right now.  She’ll just have to bring enough for herself and a speedster.

  “I don’t like candy,” Harry says and that figures.  Bitter old man.

  Cisco only snorts in reply.  She’s not really in the mood to talk to anyone, particularly Harry.

  Harry stands there.  She sees him shift in her peripheral vision and she wonders what he’s so nervous about.  She gets her answer when he starts talking.  “Ramon, I…I know that you’re mad, but…I need you to vibe Jesse.  Now that my deal with Zoom is void, I just want to make sure that, that…she’s okay.”  _That she’s alive._

  Cisco slumps, the anger draining out of her like water through a strainer.  “Sure, Harry,” she says.  She doesn’t look up, just reaches for his hand.  She isn’t bashful like before.  Simply wraps her fingers around his and thinks of Jesse.

  With blue filmed vision, she sees familiar walls and a well-known face.  Jesse looks a little thinner than she did a month ago.  Her face still smudged with tear tracks, some fresh.  But she wasn’t crying.  She was talking.  Assuring herself that her dad was coming.

  Cisco ends the vibe there because it gets harder to deal with the girl’s lonely desperation every time.  She withdraws her hand and pauses before going back to the list.  “She’s alive and she didn’t look hurt.  She hasn’t given up on you,” her voice turns to a whisper when she adds, “She still believes in you.”

  She hears Harry take a couple of deep breaths, like he’s trying not to break down.  He’s probably close to it.  It’s been months and his daughter is still in danger.  And this is why Cisco has already forgiven him.  His betrayal hurts, sure, but the _anger_ is mostly self-directed.  She seriously should have known.  Unlike with Dr. Wells, all the signs were there.

  Harry is still there, though, standing next to her, and she’s starting to fidget because she doesn’t know _what_ he’s doing.  “Cisco,” he starts and her head snaps up to look at him because she doesn’t hear him say her first name very often, “I had to take the deal.  If I didn’t then he would have killed Jesse right in front of me and I, I couldn’t let that happen.”  He’s running his hands through his hair, nervous energy rippling through his muscles.  His words are fast and run together a little, like he’s trying to catch up to something that’s moving away from him.  He lets out a huff through his nose, frustrated at something (maybe himself).  “I know that…having me, of all people, betray you like that, it…  You have every right to be mad but I need to know that we’re-,” he cuts himself off, pursing his lips and his hand halfway waving at the space between them.  He’s not looking at her and it’s almost like he can’t bring himself to.

  “Harry,” she says wearily and blue eyes hone on her, “I’m not mad at you.”  Because Barry’s right.  Cisco knows what it’s like to be in Harry’s situation.  She’s been in it before and having her friends, having _Barry_ forgive her for what she’d been forced to do felt like watching someone shred your speeding ticket when you _know_ you deserve it.  It’s wrong but relieving because you’re not sure if you have the money to cover the costs.

  “You should be,” Harry replies softly, like he doesn’t want to say it.  Like she might change her mind if he says it out loud.

  She sighs, lowering her head to look around the room.  The one she’s been sharing with this emotionally constipated dick.  She smiles minutely but it only lasts a moment.  “I’m just sorry you had to go through that.  I know what it’s like to have to choose between friends and family.  It sucks on so many levels.”

  Harry frowns like he wants to ask but he doesn’t.  He accepts her forgiveness with a nod.  This time when she reaches out to him, it’s to give comfort.

  “We’ll save her, Harry.  You need to believe that.”

  Harry nods again but this time it’s full of doubt and desperation.  Like a drowning man being thrown a stick and told it’ll help him float.  Maybe they would fail.  Maybe Jesse will be dead when they get there.  Maybe Zoom will kill them all, one by one with a vibrating hand to the heart.  But this the age of the impossible and Cisco is a believer in happy endings.  She _has_ to be.  Otherwise what’s the point?

 

 ***

 

  The day they save Jesse, it’s sunny and cold.  When they’re on their way back to the breach, Cisco hands Jesse a fist full of Twizzlers because she looks like she’s starving and Harry shakes his head fondly.  He gives Cisco a smile that says _Thank you_ from over top of Jesse’s head while the girl inhales the red candy like their made of air.  Cisco raises an eyebrow at him, saying _I told you so_ without the use of words and he shakes his head again.  And everything is okay for that one moment.  They’re almost home and they saved Jesse and now Harry can sleep at night.

  And then Jay is dead and Caitlin is grieving and asking why she even tries.  Cisco doesn’t have an answer because she’s asking the same question as she watches Harry disappear down the corridor with his daughter.

  It’s late in the medbay and Cisco is watching Caitlin sleep on the bed there, her breathing soft and slow in sleep.  Cisco keeps remembering how ragged and harsh that breathing was only hours ago.  It’s like Ronnie all over again and she keeps _wondering_ when the happy ending will come in.  She wants one for her best friend as much as she wants one for herself.

  Cisco hears a noise that has her rushing out of her chair and by her friend’s side faster than Barry.  Caitlin is crying again.  She’s turning towards Cisco, grabbing fistfuls of graphic t-shirt and pulling Cisco closer.  Cisco doesn’t resist.  She never could resist Caitlin, especially not when her friend needs her so bad.  She knows what Caitlin needs right now.  So she climbs onto the bed and wraps her friend into her arms.  She makes any kind of soothing noise she can think of as Caitlin sobs and sobs and asks, _“Why?”_

  “I know,” Cisco whispers into brown hair, “I know.”

  “Am I destine to be alone?” Caitlin gasps, her voice breaking on every word.

  “Hey,” Cisco soothes, “Don’t talk like that.  You’ll find your happy ending.”  When grief is the only response she gets, she adds, “You’ll never be alone, Caitlin.  I’ll be here.  We can grow old together and be those old ladies everyone secretly thinks are lesbians,” she receives a weak chuckle from that, “And we can find a house in a quiet neighborhood with a big porch and a garage for all my projects and a white picket fence because for some reason people are all about those white picket fences.  And you can get a cat that’ll hate me and hide all of my socks and tear up my shoes.”

  She babbles until Caitlin is asleep, tears and snot and mascara drying on her face and Cisco’s shirt.

  In the dim light of the medbay, Cisco whispers, “You won’t be lonely forever, girl.  You’re too amazing for that.”  And maybe she sounds a little bitter and a little heartbroken, but she’s already memorized the list of reasons why Harry is just a hopeless dream.  She’s even went back and added things to it.  Things like:

  1. _he’s from another dimension_
  2. _no way he’s staying for you_



  Cisco sighs.  A brown hair tickles her nose.  She wonders if it’s even possible to fall out of love at this point.  She keeps thinking about all those moments and absent touches and it’s probably going to drive her insane one day.

  For the rest of the night she doesn’t move from her spot on the bed.  Even when her arm falls asleep and she has to go pee.  Harry creeps in at one point, which is surprising because you would think he’d be with his daughter.

  Cisco is looking over her shoulder at him and he’s standing awkwardly in the doorway.  “Is she alright?” he asks in a low voice, trying not to wake Caitlin.

  Cisco sighs, lays her cheek back on top of Caitlin’s head and says truthfully, “No.  But I think she will be.”  She has to believe that.  Has to.

  There’s a pause.  “And you?”

  She shrugs.  She’s too tired to be anything but honest.  “I don’t know.  I’ve seen a lot of teammates die, it seems like.  I just can’t help thinking when this part will end.  When will people I care about stop disappearing on me?”  When will it be someone she can’t live without?

  She doesn’t get an answer at first but she’s not really expecting one.  Instead, there’s a warm hand on her shoulder, trying to squeeze some comfort into her.  She looks up again and Harry is there and his eyes are soft in that way that makes her want him more and he’s saying, “Sometimes they do come back.”  And it’s so uncharacteristic and heartbreakingly optimistic of him.

  Then he’s gone.  And it’s so normal and natural for him to be there one moment and gone the next that Cisco feels tears well up in her eyes.  She thinks that falling out of love might be impossible, but she’s got to try for her sanity’s sake.  If there are a few tears that slip free and soak Caitlin’s hair, Cisco thinks of it as payback for ruining her shirt.

 

 ***

 

  Moving on from that is hard.  Cisco wants to talk to Caitlin but her friend is struggling with her own heartache and doesn’t need to be burdened with Cisco’s issues.

  So she talks to Barry, even though he might be the worst person to talk about unrequited love with.  They’re walking around STAR Labs, trying to find the perfect room to set up a new Speed Lab (Barry’s idea) so they can better monitor Barry’s quest for improvement.

  “Freakin’ _water_ , man,” Cisco exclaims because _that_ was so cool and it’s nice to talk about something amazing for a change and not something terrifying or sad or infuriating.

  “I know,” Barry agrees.  He’s smiling and that’s good.  People haven’t really been smiling a lot lately.  “The whole time I thought I was going to sink, but I didn’t.  It almost felt like I was flying sometimes.”

  “You may be the only person who knows what it’s like to be Jesus right now,” she says, grinning.  She looks down at her tablet, the building’s blueprints pulled up on the screen.  There are several possible locations to build the Speed Lab.  They’re almost to the first one.

  “Hey, that’s pretty cool,” Barry says slightly awestruck but beaming like a proud idiot, “Maybe I can turn water into wine?”

  _“That,”_ Cisco says, pointing a finger at her companion, “Would be pretty sick.”

  “Yeah,” Barry laughs, “Iris would probably have me try for different vintages or different levels of the wine grape varietal table.”

  They share a good chuckle which fades into an easy silence.  Barry looks content and unstressed, which is a feat considering how focused he’s been on gaining speed lately.  She’s positive that Harry isn’t helping at all.  She gets it, though, so she says nothing.  Just makes a pact with Caitlin, Joe, and Iris to see that Barry doesn’t overdo it.

  They’re checking out the first room when Cisco starts a conversation she isn’t sure she even wants to have.  But there’s this question that has been sheering a hole in her brain.  “Does it get easier?”

  Barry gives her a confused look.  “Does what?”

  “Being in love with someone who doesn’t love you back.”  She doesn’t look at him.  Letting her eyes wander the room, taking in the space and layout.

  She takes a peek, though, and sees Barry’s face smooths out into sympathy.  He gives her a soft smile.  “Let me guess.  Wells.”

  “Ding ding ding,” she says with little gusto or snark.

  Barry’s brow crinkles in thought, “What makes you think he doesn’t love you back?”

  Cisco shrugs, “I have a whole list of reasons.  Mostly, he just doesn’t act like he’s interested.”

  Barry nods, a strange look crossing his face.  “Have you told him how you feel?  It actually helped with me and Iris.  It’s easier with her knowing.  I mean, in one of the other timelines, she actually admitted to having feelings for me too, so…”

  Cisco thinks about it, a frown creasing her brow.  She wonders if it would be worth it.  Worth the inevitable rejection.  She doubts it.  She doesn’t believe in destiny but she does believe in exceptions to every rule.  Barry and Iris seem to be an exception to a very important rule: love isn’t destined.  It’s not a fixed thing.  There are so many variables.  So many unknowns.  One decision here could mean a different outcome.  People like Barry and Iris were improbable rarities.  Something so uncommon you do a double take just to make sure you didn’t imagine it.  Like a Disney movie come true.

  The odds that her and Harry would work out like that were slime.  But.  _But_.  Maybe there was something in letting it all out in the open.  Maybe it would be a relief to stop holding it _in_ , like unclenching your hand after squeezing it for so long _._   She feels like a dam about to break.  Maybe she should just let it break.

  She looks around the room.  “I think it’s one is a dud.  Let’s go check out the next room.”

  They drop the matter.  But Barry squeezes her shoulder and it reminds her of that night in the medbay.  She can still feel Harry’s touch, the warmth of his hand.  How good it felt knowing he cared when she has so much evidence to the contrary.  She goes through the list again.  Starting with number one, _he’s twenty something years older than you…_

 

 ***

 

  She’s still thinking about what Barry said days later when she’s giving Dante a ride to work.  He looks at her before he asks her, “Hey, it something wrong?  You’ve been…quite.”

  She glances at him, a blush trying to spread from her ears. “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t seem fine, _Cosita_ ,” Dante says.

  Cisco rolls her eyes at the old nickname.  “Do you have to call me that?”

  “As your older brother, yes I do,” he replies cheekily.

  “You know,” Cisco threatens, “You’re perfectly capable of walking the rest of the way.”

  Dante laughs and it’s not mocking or demeaning and Cisco smiles a little because it almost feels like when they were younger.

  Then the garbage truck runs the red light and hits the passenger side of the van.  They tell her later that Dante died instantly, but Cisco doesn’t remember much.  She remembers waking up trapped and crying for someone to help her brother.

  Mamá yells at her in Spanish while she’s still lying in the hospital.  Joe, Barry, and Caitlin watch in shock.  Papá doesn’t show and that’s a clear indication of his feelings.  So it’s just Mamá.  She says that Dante is dead because of Cisco.  That Cisco killed him.  Mamá slaps her in a fit of rage and sorrow and Joe forcefully drags her mother from the room.

  Cisco’s brain goes into overdrive and she starts to beg Barry to fix her mistake.

  “Please, Barry, it’s just one day.  You’ve done it before.  Why is this different?”

  “Cisco,” Barry says and he’s shaking his head slowly and she _knows_ that’s his way of saying _I can’t._

  _“Please,”_ she cries, “Please, Barry.  Do this for me.  Do this _one_ thing for me.”

  “I can’t,” Barry says firmly but he looks like his heart might be breaking.

  “Why not?” she asks, anger seeping through, “After everything I’ve done for you, why won’t you do this for me?”

  “Because,” he says, running his hands through his hair, “I can’t keep doing this.  I can’t keep running back in time and fixing every bad thing that happens because when I do something _else_ bad happens.  I won’t even do it to save my _mom_ because I don’t want to make things worse.  I can’t do it to save Dante.  I’m sorry, Cisco.”

  She stars at him and thinks, _Why?  Why won’t you?  Why won’t you fix my mistake?_   What she says is, “Then I guess that tells me exactly how much you value our friendship.”

  Barry looks hurt and upset and he tries to talk to her but she asks him to leave.  He does, but only because Joe is leading him out.  Caitlin looks about ready to cry.

  The funeral is a little piece of Hell.  It seems the rest of the Ramon family blames her for Dante’s death too and she’s not even allowed to sit up front with them.  She sits in the back between Caitlin and Joe, Iris and Wally right next to them.  She wishes Harry was here.  She wishes he didn’t have to sneak around the city like the criminal he’s not.  She notices that Barry doesn’t show up, but she doesn’t really care.  She knows that she’s projecting the rage at herself onto Barry.  Blaming him when the blame is really hers.

  But she doesn’t care.  Doesn’t care because she’s too weak and selfish to take the blame herself.

  Like so many things in her life, she should have seen it coming.  She should have been more aware of the road.  She was too focused on how they felt like siblings again.  Now he’s gone and she’ll never get that back.  She should have tried to reconnect sooner.  Should have…  But didn’t.

  Caitlin sleeps on her coach for the next week.  Makes her eat.  Tucks her in at night.  Cisco goes back to work after the week is up only because Caitlin’s worry lines are growing deeper.  She’s really too young and beautiful to be looking so old and worn.

  Everyone looks surprised to see her walk into the Cortex.  Barry zips to her side and hugs her.  She lets him but doesn’t hug him back.  When he’s pulls back, she mumbles something about working on a project and leaves, pointedly not looking at Barry’s hurt expression.  She knows it’s stupid but she’s still mad at him.  Still hurt.  It would have been just _one day._   Just one day.

  She works with Barry only because the Flash is more important than her bitterness.  After all, if Joe and Iris can do it, so can she.  She builds ways for the Flash to take down metahumans.  She allows Caitlin to take her to lunch and eats everything until Caitlin is satisfied.  Apparently Caitlin gets others in on it too, because Joe brings homemade food to the lab more often and Iris starts bringing take-out.  Harry hovers and watches her like a hawk.  Jesse and Wally tip toe around her like she’s a sleeping dog.  Like she’ll snap at any moment.  Sometimes she feels like that.

  Wally finds her one day as she cleaning her tools in her workshop.  “Hey,” he says, his voice small and tentative.  She turns to see him lurking in the doorway.

  “Hey,” she says back.  Then goes back to cleaning.

  Wally enters.  “I’m really sorry about your brother.”

  She nods.  “Thank you,” she says and tries to sound at least a little genuine.

  Wally bites his bottom lip and moves his hands like he’s not sure where to put them.  He settles for his back pockets.  “Look, I just wanted to say that…I understand how you’re feeling.”

  She looks up at him, remembers that he lost a mom and thinks that maybe he does.

  “I just,” he’s saying, his hand come out of their hiding place to clasp in front of him, “I was in a really bad place after my mom died.  I’d been working so hard to get her the medical treatment that she needed, but…it was really hard.  Nothing seemed like it was enough.  Drag racing, working at McDonalds after school…”

  “You worked at McDonalds?” she asks, a shadow of a smile gracing her lips.

  Wally huffs out a laugh.  “Yeah.  I did.  For about eight months.  Worst job ever.”

  Cisco nods in understanding.  She’s been there.  Never at McDonalds but she has her own version of the same story.

  “Look, my point is,” Wally continues, stepping closer until he’s almost next to her, “I was angry and hurt when she died.  And I didn’t know Dad or Iris real well back then so I wasn’t going to go to them, especially when things were so tense between them.  I had a friend suggest this support group they have at the Central City gym.  I didn’t really want to go at first, but then I had a really bad day and decided to check it out.  It helped, actually.  A lot.  It was nice to be around people who could really understand what I was going through.”

  “I’m already around people that understand what I’m going through,” she tells him and it’s such a terrible truth.  It really is.

  Wally nods.  “Yeah.  But it was easier for me to talk to a group of strangers that didn’t except anything from me.  I just thought maybe you might try it too.  See if it helps.”

  This time when she looks up at him, there are tears peeking out from behind her eyes.  “Thank you,” she whispers and means it.

  Wally nods.  “Anytime.  They always meet in the basement at 8:00 PM on Mondays.”

  When he leaves, Cisco is left wondering when he turned out to be so grown up or if that’s how he’d always been.

  When Monday comes, she goes to the support group because it’d been a bad day and her head was still reeling from when she tripped into Harry’s arms like some classic click-flick.  She doesn’t say a word for the whole meeting.  Just listens to other people talk.  She shakes her head when the group leader tries to get her to introduce herself.  She leaves with no one knowing her name.

  She finishes the improved Kevlar vest and shows it to Captain Singh, not even bothering to show it to Joe.  He’ll learn about it when they issue it to the whole precinct.  She bumps into Julian on the way out and he asks her how the meeting with the Captain went.  She shrugs, not really looking into his eyes.  “It was fine.”

  He looks at her with sympathy.  Word must have gotten out among the police station.  The empathetic looks all make sense now.  “I see.  You know, I lost a sister years ago,” he tells her.  She knows it’s his way of showing support.

  “It sucks,” she says.

  He gives a small chuckle, “Yes, it does.”

  He asks her if she would like to talk about it over lunch but she declines.  She doesn’t really want to talk about it.  Not to anyone.

  It’s hard some days.  It seems like she lacks the energy to care about the things she used to hold so dearly.  Her DVD and music collection has been gathering dust.  She doesn’t even go home most nights, preferring to sleep on her workshop cot.  Her personal projects at STAR Labs have been shelved and forgotten.  Anything that didn’t have do to with the Flash or her CCPD work shoved aside like old rags.  Her already unhealthy relationship with coffee worsens to the point that Caitlin is threatening to hide their stash if Cisco doesn’t _stop inhaling it every waking hour._   She’s not sure Caitlin understands, exactly, what Cisco is feeling.  When Caitlin is grieving, she throws herself into her work.  She focuses all her _energy_ on the people around her so she doesn’t have to think about her sorrow.  Cisco just feels muted.  Grey.  Dulled down to the stubs.  It takes _energy_ to care.  Energy she seems to be in short supply of lately.

  Harry seems to be the only one that can make her feel something other than tired.  When his hand lingers on hers after passing a tool, when he gives her a look of understanding instead of pity or sympathy, when he stays silent and doesn’t ask her how she feels…  It makes her fall deeper into love until she’s in over her head with no way to pull herself out.  She thinks that she might just let herself sink to the bottom and stay there.  There’s no point in trying to climb out now, anyway.

  It really is a shame that _he’s_ the one who makes her feel alive when _he’s_ the one she can’t have.  It’s ironic.  She watches as he runs franticly around trying to find his daughter again after only just getting her back (and _that_ really is tragic in Cisco’s opinion).  At least there’s some comfort in the fact that Jesse left willingly, not ripped away from safety and warmth.

  Cisco’s in Cortex pretending to look busy.  Really, she’s just coding non-sense but despite being surrounded by smart people, nobody here would know the difference.  Harry might but he’s off somewhere looking for Jesse.  So, Cisco is safe to ‘hide in plain sight’.  She found out early on that trying to hide away in her workshop would only have people seeking her out to ‘check up on her’ and then hover until she snaps at them.  But if she’s working _among_ them, they content themselves by just a glance and a question.  And if she looks busy enough, they don’t even bother her with a question.

  She’s listening to music, letting the words flood in through her earbuds to her brain.  Letting the outside world tune out and become background static.  She doesn’t even notice when it gets late and everyone leaves.  Doesn’t notice the worried looks that Barry and Caitlin give her when she doesn’t answer their good night calls.  Doesn’t notice when it turns mid-night and she’s still typing non-sense code.  Doesn’t notice when Harry trudges in, weary and worn, like the world weighed on his shoulders.  A modern day Atlas, the Greek Titan cursed by the gods to hold up the sky.  She doesn’t notice him until he comes to stand next to her and pulls out one of her earbuds.  She jerks back and away from him, looking up.  He’s still wearing the hat.  And he’s looking at her with a weirdly intense look.

  “You should go to bed,” he says, his voice a low rumble.  Like a far off thunder storm.  “It’s getting late.”

  Cisco blinks and looks around the Cortex, finally realizing that she’s been alone for hours.  “Yeah.  Okay,” she replies, shutting her monitor down without bothering to save her work.  There’s nothing to save, anyway.  “Night,” she mumbles as she heads to her workshop.  To the cot.

  She hears him sigh behind her.  “No,” he says, “I meant in your real bed.  At your apartment.”

  “Why?” she asks.  The question is natural.  An ingrained response to argue with everything Harry says to her.  “Does it really matter where I sleep?”  She doesn’t tell him she wishes she could sleep next to him.  That she thinks about it all the time.  He could probably keep her warm and make her feel like everything is okay.

  “It matters because you can’t keep doing this to yourself.  There’s people here that care about you,” his voice lowers to almost a whisper, “They hate seeing you like this.  It scares them.”

  “And you?” she asks and this time it’s full the bone deep weariness she suffering from lately.

  “Me?” Harry asks, his brow wrinkling together underneath the hat brim.

  She turns to face him fully and maybe it’s the lighting, but she thinks she sees concern etched in his features.  He’s leaning towards her a little, like she’s a magnet pulling him in.  If there wasn’t the five feet of space between them, she might be tempted to bridge the gap.  She’s tired of holding back.  Tired of a lot of things.  “Does it scare you?  Seeing me like this.”

  Harry’s gaze drops like a dead weight.  “It concerns me, yes.  You’re important to this team.  We couldn’t pull off half the crazy things we do without you.”

  We?  Harry said ‘we’ like he includes himself.  It brings a small smile to her face.  A simple quirk at the corners of her mouth.  “We wouldn’t get far without you too, Harry,” she tells him and it might sound a lot like _I love you_ in her head but she tries not to think about it.

  She leaves the Cortex, grabbing her keys on the way out, and heads home because Harry wants her to sleep in her own bed.  She doesn’t get much sleep, but Harry smiles at her in the morning when she gets to work and she thinks the restless night is worth that.

 

 ***

 

  Zoom takes Caitlin.  Zoom is Jay.  Jay is Hunter Zolomon.  Jay’s _alive._   Has been this whole time.  Barry is no longer a speedster.  _And Harry is missing._   Cisco wants to scream and throw things.  Jesse comes back and she’s frantic.  Cisco understands.  It feels like everyone is leaving her.

  Harry is missing.  Kidnapped by a crazy meta.

  Cisco falls into the familiar pace of trying not to panic and trying to be productive.  She forgets about Dante and how angry she is at Barry.

   A lot of the day is a blur.  Jesse paces.  Barry is upset (mostly with himself).  Joe is calm.  Iris is trying to help.  Caitlin isn’t there.  Cisco almost cries a fit of frustrated tears.  But the team is still a team and they still have great teamwork (and that’s a miracle considering the mess of broken relationships they are).  With Jesse’s help, they find the meta and they help Barry beat him without super speed.  And then Jesse’s hugging Harry and Cisco watches _wishing_ she could have a turn.  But life is always teasing you with the things you can’t have and Cisco goes back to work, back to feeling dulled.

  When Harry shows up in her workshop, she’s drawn to the bruise over his left eye.  It looks like it hurts.  With Caitlin gone ( _but still alive, still alive, still alive)_ there’s not really anyone that takes care of that kind of stuff.  If she was here, she’d be a hovering mother hen insisting on taking care of any and all wounds no matter how small.

  If she was here.

  Cisco signs.  She goes to the mini fridge she keeps in the workshop, pulls out the ice pack she always keeps there (Caitlin insists).  She goes to him.  His gaze switches from the erase board to her, hand paused in mid-equation, and she feels a rush of relief to the see those blue eyes again.  “Here,” she holds out the ice pack, “You should put some ice on that bruise.”

  He pauses a moment then takes it, holding it in his right hand along with the marker.  He looks like he’s not sure what to do with it.  “Thanks,” he says.

  She nods and almost turns away but something is telling her _no, you need to make sure._   She reaches out with her hand.  Her fingers grasp the black fabric of his jacket and the solid arm underneath.  He’s real.  And warm and _alive_ and she knows she should stop because this will only get her hurt but the words are coming out of her mouth like a waterfall and she can’t stop them.  “I’m glad you’re okay.  I…I don’t know if I could handle you not being okay.”

  It’s a confession.  After all this time.  A confession of feelings that go beyond platonic connotations.  It makes her feel open and vulnerable.  She looks him in the eyes and sees his pained expression.  And she knows what that means.  She lets go, pulls away, retreats from him because this is the part where she finds out she was right all the long.  That life hasn’t stopped beating her down.  That she’s stupid and pathetic and it still _hurts_ even though she was expecting it.

  “Cisco,” Harry says almost urgently and then his left hand is clasping around her wrist, “Please wait.”

  She waits.  She forces herself to look into his eyes because she needs to face this head on.  Needs to be strong in the face of rejection.  But as he looks at her, she doesn’t feel strong.  Doesn’t feel like she can handle this on top of everything else.

  “Cisco, I,” he starts, his head dipping downward for a moment but when he’s looking back at her, that pained expression is back in full force, “I…want to.  I want _us_ , but…” he’s shaking his head, “This won’t work.  We’re from different Earths and…I have to go back.  To my Earth.  There’s so much I have to fix.  So many mistakes _I’ve_ made.  And…we just can’t.”

  She doesn’t know if she’s being crushed or flying high.  Harry is confessing his feelings for _her_.  But he’s also saying no.  No to her and her feelings.  She nods, trying to stop the tears that blur her vision.  She’s not very successful.  Her breath hitches and when she pulls away this time, he lets her go.  He looks for all the world like a man who’s just sold his most precious possession.

  She leaves and goes home.  And she cries for the first time since the funeral.  Cries until she falls asleep and wishes that someone was here to hold her.

  Later, she takes out the list and adds: _18\. he said no._

 

 ***

 

  She tries to distract herself from both Harry and Dante.  Zoom is an excellent distraction.  Caitlin still being held captive is an even better one.  Watching her brother’s doppelganger die brings a lot of it back because it hits very close to home.  And then Barry is trapped in the speed force, Jesse isn’t watching up, and everyone is panicking because there’s a zombie loose in Central City.

  The whole time Cisco feels like she’s drowning.  Her closest friend is gone, her brother was dead, Harry is avoiding her whenever possible, and everyone wants her to save Barry.  She tries to.  Because even though she’s mad, she really doesn’t want to lose another teammate.  She’s _tired_ of losing people.

  It’s Henry who finds her in the bathroom trying to pull herself back together after her failed attempt to bring Barry back.  After she watches him turn away from her out stretched hand.  She wonders if it’s because she hurt him (she knows she did).  She wonders if she should’ve said she forgives him, just to say something to make him come back.  She wonders if she just killed another person with her inactions.

  Her head is aching, a dull throb pulsing, and she knows she pushed her powers maybe a little too much.  Her nose started bleeding a few minutes ago and she came here to clean it up.  There’s a knock on the door and it puts her in a scramble to clean away the blood, to wash away the evidence.  She needs to be strong right now.  The team needs her to be strong because she’s the only one that can reach Barry where he is.

  She opens the door expecting Joe or Iris, asking her to try again, to try harder.  Instead, she gets Henry, a worried dad who is so close to losing his only child, asking if _she_ was okay.  He must notice something in her face because he just hugs her and she buries her face in his chest, saying, “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.”  Because she knows she failed everyone.

  “Shh,” Henry sooths her, “I know you tried your best.  That’s all I ask for.  Thank you.”

  Cisco closes her eyes, a few tears breaking free and soaking his shirt.  She holds him tighter and wonders if he knows.  Knows she’s mad at Barry.  Still mad.  She wonders if he did, if he would think she didn’t try her hardest to get his son back.  Iris thinks it.  Cisco wonders it herself.

  But Barry _does_ come back.  He comes back to Iris.  He comes back with his _speed._   And then Caitlin is back and Cisco hugs her so tight and for so long that her friend has to push her away because they have work to do and evil Earth-2 metas to beat.

  Seeing Laurel again hurts but so do a lot of things right now.  Like watching Caitlin suffer with PTSD and depression.  Watching Iris continuously shun Joe from keeping her mom a secret.  Watching Wally fumble around in the middle of it.

  Watching Harry.

  And now watching Barry grieve the death of his dad, losing another parent to an evil psychopath.  It’s cruel and that’s when Cisco becomes convinced that there _is_ no happy ending.  She’s not happy that Barry is suffering, not at all.  She never wanted this.

  She tells Barry that she’s sorry about Henry.  He looks like he wants to hug her so she hugs him instead.  He returns it eagerly, like a starving man.  She wonders why she’s so mad and realizes that she not really anymore.  She not much of anything lately besides afraid and tired.  “I’m sorry,” she whispers in his shoulder.

  He hugs her harder.  “I missed you,” he chokes and she knows he’s crying.  She smiles a little.  The big baby.

  They save the multiverse.  That’s something.  And now Harry and Jesse are going home.

  The night before they do, Harry comes into the workshop and Cisco can tell by the look on his face he’s going to make this more difficult.  His eyes are sad and she can see he’s suffering but _he’s_ the one who said no.  She knows they could have made it work.  She wishes he had more faith in that.

  “Don’t,” she says to him, keeping her eyes on the screwdriver in her hand.  She’s taking apart an old project because she needs something to keep her mind off of everything.  She’s all too aware of the hand resting on the back of her chair.  “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

  _“Please,”_ she pleads to him, her hands going still.  She’s sitting and he seems impossibly tall because of it.

  His fingers gently grasp her chin, moving her head to look up at him.  He’s leaning over, leaning closer, and she can feel his breath on her face, smell his scent (industrial soap and something musty).  “Just one for the road?” he asks and she realizes that he can’t resist either.  That’s he’s torturing himself too.

  His lips hover over hers and she closes her eyes as she closes the gap.  He deepens the kiss, the hand on her chin sliding to cup the back of her neck, fingers slipping through her hair.  His lips are soft.  Just like she imagined they’d be.  He pulls away too soon and she’s left feeling even more broken then before.  She doesn’t bother to stop the tear that falls.  Harry’s thumb is brushing it away.

  “Goodbye, Cisco,” he whispers.  Then he’s leaving (always leaving) and she wonders if she’ll ever be over him.

  She doubts it.

  The next day comes.  Jesse is giving her a sad smile and Harry is acting like nothing happened.  Cisco opens the breach and watches the real Jay Garrick take them away.  She doesn’t know why, but when the breach closes, she feels like something important went with Harry.  Something she can’t really afford to lose.

  Caitlin has her over for a girls night.  Cisco doesn’t cry when her friend asks her if she’ll be okay.  She just shrugs and sips her wine.

  She adds another thing to the list.  _19\. he’s gone._

 ***

 

  She finally talks about Dante in the support group.  It’s been a pretty bad day.  Harry has been gone for a week and she still hasn’t erased the board holding his last equation.  It’s a constant reminder of something she only had a taste of.  A cop was shot and killed this morning while wearing one of her vests.  Joe says it’s not her fault, that the officer was shot through one of the seams.  Can’t really help that.  The seams are always the weakest part of any design.  Then Barry starts acting weird right before she leaves to go to the gym.  He acts like nothing happened and she hears him ask _“She works out?”_ when she’s leaving and she clenches her jaw.  The old bitterness begins to bubble again.  And she really thought she was over this.

  She still doesn’t tell the group her name (they call her Desi because they all agree she has Desi Arnaz’s eyes) but she _does_ tell them everything about Dante and about how she’s felt since then.  The group leader looks relieved and excited that she’s actually sharing.  Cisco can’t really blame him.  She doesn’t tell them it’s gotten worse since Harry left.

  She’s just finishing when she sees Barry standing out in the hallway.  The anger comes back.  When she goes to talk to him, he still acts like he doesn’t know what’s going on and it makes her angrier.

  And then, the real kicker: she finds out that _Barry_ , Mr. Can’t-Make-Things-Worst, went back in time, saved his mom, and lived with his parents for _three months_ before coming back and finding out he changed things in _this_ timeline.

  She feels betrayed.  He _said_ he’d never do it.  _Could_ never do it.  But he did.  He did for his own family.  It hurts.  It hurts like Dr. Wells, like Kendal, like Harry, like Papá’s cold looks, and Mamá telling her she’s not welcome to her own brother’s funeral.  All of it says one important thing: she’s not good enough.  Never good enough.

  It leaves her wondering why she even bothers with it all.

  She forgives Barry eventually, but it’ll never be the same.  She knows it and she can see that Barry knows it.  He tries, though.  He tries to bring out the Cisco he seems to think she should be.  Happier.  Quick with a smile and a joke.  How she used to be before Dante died (before she let him die).  She can tell he’s not used to her, here and now.  But they’re still friends, despite everything.

  She wonders if they’ll always be friends at this point.  They’ve been through a lot.

  Then the breach opens and she’s geared up for an enemy to jump through but instead she sees Harry and she thinks she might forget how to breath.

  He came back?

 

 


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I the only one super excited about episode 13? They're bringing Harry and Jesse back! Oh yeah, baby!
> 
> Thanks to everyone who've been following this and especially, thanks to all those who've left a comment. I could eat those for lunch. Seriously. I hope you enjoy this chapter. I'm not sure if I did Harry right, but I'll let you be the judges.

 

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  The last thing Cisco says to him is, “I’ll see you later, Harry.”  She says it with so much certainty and affection, like she could wait forever just knowing this one thing, that he almost kisses her in front of everyone.  He wanted so much for her to believe that he’s coming back for her, that they’re going to make this relationship work, and it makes him smile to realize that she already knows.  It makes her more beautiful to him.  Jesse rolls her eyes and makes a face.  The real Jay Garrick seems to find it amusing as he grabbing their arms and rushing them back to Earth-2.  Harry almost wishes he didn’t have to go back.  That he could stay with Cisco forever.  But there’s a lot to be done on his Earth.  A lot he needs to atone for.

  The next month is busy.  People are wondering where he’s been for the last year and where Jesse’s been and where’s the Flash has been.  All the while, they’ve been tentatively celebrating the brief respite in Zoom’s reign of terror.  Garrick makes a public speech about Zoom being defeated, about Zoom killing the Flash (because the truth is too damaging to tell), and the city wants Garrick to stay and be their new hero.  He declines, saying something embarrassing in response, a smirk pulling the strings of his mouth.  “You don’t need me to be your hero.  You’ve got one right here,” and he points to Harry, who has been standing to the side trying not to be noticed, but everyone notices him now, “That man right there.  Helped save me from Zoom.  He helped save all of us from Zoom.”

  And that’s really when he realizes that he’s not cut out for this.  He’s not a hero.  Doesn’t deserve to be one.  But in the month that follows, the city seems to be determined to make him one.

  All Harry thinks, all he can really concentrate on in those weeks, is when can he go back.  When can he go back to Cisco and the promise that she brings.  Each passing day it a slow kind of torture.  He wonders if/when Cisco will fizzle into view, a projection of happy, cheek slitting smiles and snarky comebacks.  He wonders if it’ll be today, if it’ll be this afternoon when she makes good on her promise to check in on him.  But she doesn’t ever show.  Doesn’t ever project herself over and try to throw his things around.  At first, he thinks something is wrong.  But if something is wrong, the team would somehow find a way to tell him.  Right?

  Or what if it’s something else entirely.  What if, with each passing day, Cisco begins to forget about him.  Forget about _them_.  And she finds someone else.  Someone younger.  Less bitter and dry.  What if Harry has already lost her?

  There are days he almost jumps through the breach he has kept stabilized in the basement of STAR Labs.  But those are the worst days, when his insecurities are so strong he feels like he’s drowning.  He doesn’t know if he could handle finding out his fears are true.

  Jesse gives him sympathetic looks and soft smirks at first.  But as time drags on, crawling like sharp nails across his skin, she looks more like she’s becoming angry.  Not at him, but at Cisco.  Like she’s wondering, too, where those promised projections are.  Why Cisco left her dad hanging on a rope, a noose slowly choking the life out of him.

  He wonders too.

  Then Jesse comes to him, bubbling a mile a minute, and he finds out that she _was_ affected by the particle accelerator and is now a speedster and he really doesn’t have the nerves to handle this.  He may be over reacting a little when he has Jesse preform every test he can think of.  He knows it’s not enough, that he needs a doctor and people who _know_ about developing speedsters and what’s normal or not.  And that means one thing.

  It’s Jesse that says it.  She’s also the one that practically pushes him through the breach because he suddenly can’t move.  All he can think is that it’s been a whole month and eight days since he last saw Cisco and that doesn’t seem right.  Not with the looks she gave him before he left.  He should have heard from her.  So he fidgets and hesitates.

    “Dad,” Jesse huffs in exasperation.  She’s giving him this look that has always meant he’s being an idiot.  Maybe he is.  Then suddenly, Jesse is zipping to his side, grabbing his arm, and flinging him through the breach.  He only has time to think _Thank God,_ because he’d never have taken that step on his own, and then he’s through the other side and he sees the wrong end of two guns pointing at him.  He raises his hands out of reflex and is stuttering out his identification so that he won’t get shot (again).

  His eyes find Cisco immediately.  She looks paler and a little thinner than he remembers.  There’s a moment when their eyes meet and for that moment, it feels like he’s looking into the eyes of a stranger because there’s nothing of the warm sparkle that seems to saturate them.  Nothing of the bright fondness she directs at him.  Nothing.  No sign or evidence.  Then she’s looking at Jesse, like everyone else, and he gets the feeling that she’s avoiding his gaze.  There’s the beginnings of a lump, sharp and heavy, forming in the bottom of his stomach.  It makes him feel slightly sick and very anxious.

  He goes to her, reaches out with his hand towards her cheek, and his chest constricts painfully when she pulls away from him, her eyes downcast and arms folded around her like a shield.  It’s how he knows he lost her.  Somehow, someway, he lost her and it makes him want to rip his hair out because he _doesn’t know why._

  Then when Harry sees the speed lab and guesses (correctly) that Barry has changed the timeline, he knows that Cisco is one of those changes.  Somehow, he knows.  And he just might break his promise and murder Barry for it because it feels like having something warm torn away from inside his chest.  Like having Jesse pulled from his embrace again.

  Only this time, there’s nothing to rescue.

  Harry finds Cisco in her workshop later that day.  She’s standing at a workbench, pouring over some blueprints.  She looks drawn and tired, dark circles under her eyes like she hasn’t been getting enough sleep.  There’s a weight that seems to have settled in overnight, making her shoulders sag ever so slightly.  If he hadn’t spent hours studying her, watching her when everyone else was looking away, he might not have noticed the change.

  He almost turns back, but he doesn’t.  Even though he wants to.  He wonders if he’s part masochist because _this_ is a kind of torture he’s familiar with and it’s self-inflicted.  Just watching her and not _being_ with her.

  He pulls out a folded piece of paper from his front pocket.  A piece of yellow notepad he found in the trash months ago.  The one he has carried with him almost everywhere, even after he went back to his Earth.  It’s a reminder, written in Cisco’s handwriting, and it lists all the ways she finds _Harry_ attractive.  Him.  A forty-four-year-old man who has a _daughter_ practically her age.

  He still hasn’t told her he found it, crumpled up and forgotten in the trash.  He doesn’t even remember what he was looking for anymore, maybe an odd equation he had scribbled down in the yellow notepad.  But he’ll never forget the flood of thoughts and emotions and sensations he felt when he unfolded the crumpled yellow paper.  He expected the piece to a puzzle he was trying to solve and instead got another puzzle entirely.

  And that was really the start of if all.  The start of watching, of memorizing.  Of falling deep into something he thought he’d never be invited back into because he wasn’t careful last time.  He never really considered younger women before, but Cisco made it easy to forget about age.  Or more so, the _importance_ of it.  He’s always been consciously aware of how young most of Team Flash is.  Cisco just makes the things that probably _should_ matter, somehow _not_ matter.  Like the age difference.  Like the fact the he’s a widower with a daughter.  The fact that they each belong to different Earths.  It’s true, he had been developing a certain fondness for her, even before finding the list, but sometimes you never dream of the possibilities until they’re presented before you.  And dreaming Harry did from that point on.

  He tried to stop it, tried to tramped down on his blossoming feelings and lingering thoughts, fraying the corners of his concentration, because he didn’t want to become attached.  But it was like trying to swim against the current.  Tiring.  Draining.  And in the end, impossible.  Cisco, somehow, managed to get Harry to fall in love with her without even trying.

  He’s read the list many times.  He used to spend hours wondering why she never acted on it, wondering if it was more than a simple crush, wondering if _he_ should act on it…  But Jesse, despite everything (and despite his aching heart), had been his first priority, even after she was rescued.

  And Jesse, of course, picked up on her dad’s hopeless pinning in only one day.  _“Dad, it’s painfully obvious to someone who knows you.”_ Which is slightly embarrassing to be read so easily.  But she’s never been anything besides superb at connecting dots.  It’s something she inherited from him.

  She’s the one that convinced him to try making a move, but there never seemed like a perfect time to start that conversation.  And every time he got close, when it was just him and Cisco, when the question was teetering at the tip of his tongue, ready to _finally_ fall off the edge, and his fingers would fidget with whatever he was holding (a marker, a soldering iron, a mug), something would interrupt.  It would come like a hook and reel Cisco away from him.  Every time.

  Until the night before he and Jesse left, after all the shit they’ve been through and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever see Cisco again and he wasn’t sure if he could handle that…

  _He’s going through the workshop collecting all the things he brought with him from his Earth.  It’s surprisingly tedious work.  He never realized just how deeply his things have become buried amongst Cisco’s tools and random knick-knacks.  He’s riffling through a drawer full of pencils and paper and half-baked ideas hastily sketched out on an assortment of napkins.  He knows that he brought a flash drive with him and it’s the one thing he can’t find.  Cisco catches him roughly pulling the drawer out completely, pencils jumping out and bouncing off the floor._

_“Hey.  What have I told you about throwing my stuff around?” she comments, the bit in her tone is real but mild.  It carries the same undertone all their bickering has taken on in the last months.  He knows that if they start now, somewhere along the line they’ll both start to enjoy the back and forth of quips and insults.  It feels like playing tennis._

_But Harry doesn’t really feel like pretending everything is alright because, God help him, he’s going to miss that snarky, annoying, immature tone so much.  So he doesn’t bother to hide his poor mood, knowing she’ll probably chalk it up to a ‘Harry thing’.  He frowns and he tosses the drawer onto the nearest flat surface with a loud_ bang _.  Then he begins to shuffle the pencils, papers, and napkins around carelessly, lips pursed, gaze steadily not directed at Cisco because he’s not sure what would happen if it was._

_“Jeez, Harry.  Can you try to_ not _break anything?” Cisco snaps and there’s a little genuine anger in there._

_Harry wants to scream.  Wants to throw something.  Wants to rant and shout.  But most of all, he wants to stride over to that ridiculous, beautiful idiot and kiss her until she can’t breathe and she’s gasping for air because that’s how he feels most days whenever he’s in her presence._

_Harry feels like a fool.  Like he’s sixteen again, falling for the girl across the lunch room and if_ only _he could gather enough courage to talk to her…_

_Damn it!_

_He roughly pushes the drawer away, shoving it and everything in its path off the desk completely.  The crash and clatter that fill the workshop almost drowns out Cisco’s yelled, “What the hell?”  Then she’s grabbing his arm and forcefully turning him to face her.  “What the hell is your problem?”_

_And then Harry does something stupid.  Something desperate.  He finally looks into her eyes and can’t stop his hands from flying up to cup her face as he smashes his lips against hers.  Cisco freezes.  And he pauses, waiting, hoping, berating himself for acting on a crumpled up list that was scribbled out like some teenage fan girl day dreaming about her celebrity crush of the week.  Then he feels hands slide up his chest to grasp the black fabric there, feels her press closer, and her lips begin to move against his.  He pulls away and she tries to follow him, tries to taste his lips again.  But he needs to be sure, needs to know that he’s not just some fling, that she realizes_ she’s _not just some fling.  And she’s looking at him like he’s a wish come true, a dazzling smile gracing her mouth.  “Cisco, I—.”_

_She shuts him up by pulling him back down into the kiss._

  He still remembers how she felt.  How she tasted and smelt and sounded and looked.  Like all of his senses were working together to imprint that moment on his brain.

  He had Cisco.  Had her promise to wait, to come as a projection and knock his things over.  And now all of that is gone because Barry went and screwed up the timeline.  At least now he knows why Cisco never visited him.

  As Harry watches Cisco now, he wants to turn around, to leave, to never ask and never know.  But he doesn’t (masochist, he thinks) because he’s had a taste of something sweet and he craving it with a burning hunger.  He stuffs the paper back into his pocket.  He walks into the room…

  And goes to stand at the erase board, his eyes taking in the math that covers it, trying to gather his thoughts into some semblance of order.  He’s never been good at this part of human interaction.  The real, ‘needing to be honest about the feelings that consume me like an inferno’ part.

  “If you’re looking for a mistake, you won’t find one,” Cisco says from behind him.  Her voice was duller than he remembers.  Like silverware that needs a good polish.

  “I’m not looking for a mistake,” he tells her, even though he finds one right after saying so.  It’s at the end, so it’ll be an easy fix and wouldn’t change the entire equation.  He picks up a marker before erasing the last few steps to input the right numbers.

  Cisco snorts from behind him, “Yeah, sure.”  She doesn’t stop him from making the correction, though.  In fact, she doesn’t even argue about how she thinks the math was right.  How Harry coming in and changing it is a personal attack to her intelligence.  She barely evens looks up at him from her blueprints when he glances back to see her reaction.

  Harry looks back at the board with a frown.  There’s definitely something wrong and it definitely has something to do with him.  He’s running through the possibilities but it’s like running blind.  He only has his own memories to go by, which don’t help him because he has no idea what’s different in this timeline.  Aside from Cisco and the Speed Lab, he hasn’t run into any other changes.  Maybe, in this timeline, Cisco might still have feelings for him.  Might still…  He takes a deep breath…

  And shallows his words when Jesse rushes in like a strike of lightning babbling to Cisco about needing a suit.

  It starts an argument between father and daughter and by the time Jesse huffs out of the room Harry notices that at some point, Cisco left.  Leaving him alone in the workshop he spent so many hours working besides her.  Debating with her.  Calculating the differences between a person from Earth-1 and a person from Earth-2.  Waking up sprawled out on the cot he didn’t remember falling asleep on and Cisco slumped over her computer station.  Wanting to kiss her and hold her and see what it’s like, if it’d be like a fire raging under his skin or calm ocean waves that sooth you to sleep.  It’s both.  Her scent.  Her taste.  The feel of her hands.  It all ignites a kind of desire that can plague any man, and yet she settles his restless soul, making him feel like he belongs with her.  At least, that’s how it felt when he kissed her.

  Harry corners Barry alone in the Cortex, a firm (and slightly crushing) grip on the speedster’s arm.  “What’s different?” he growls.  He tries to make himself taller, more intimidating, even though he and Barry are about the same height. 

  Barry looks confused and taken aback.  He’s shaking his head a little, eyes wide, asking, “Different?  About what?”

  Harry can’t help his impatience, he’s an impatient person, and he’s constantly annoyed at how slow some people connect the dots.  “The timeline, Allen.  _This_ timeline.  What’s different?”

  Barry’s face goes from bemused to guilty in a split second.  His hands come up to rub at his face.  “Well, there’s the Speed Lab, obviously.  Iris and Joe weren’t talking to each other for a while, but they’ve worked it out.  There’s a new co-worker I’ve apparently been working with for almost a year and--.”

  “And Cisco?” Harry asks, interrupting the younger man.  Barry somehow manages to look even more ashamed.  Harry purses his lips, his mind whirling with the words he _wants_ to say but he settles for adding, “She’s different.”

  Barry nods, a hand running through his hair, “Yeah, I know.  Her brother, Dante…he was killed in a car accident almost four months ago.”

  Her brother.  He didn’t die from what Harry remembers, from the _timeline_ he remembers.  This means that his death in this timeline is an effect of Barry’s time travel.  His grip on Barry’s arm tightens, making the speedster wince, and he can’t stop the flash of anger that shoots up his spin and clogs his brain.  “Her brother?  Her _brother_ is dead because _you_ made a mistake and changed the timeline?  Allen—.”

  “I know, I _know_.  I just…” Barry says and there is the world of guilt and shame in his voice and eyes and face.  He looks like a man trying to pull his own yoke and hitting a rock too large for him to move.  If anything, Harry can understand that.  “I just couldn’t handle it anymore.  I couldn’t.  And I’m sorry and I _know_ I messed up and I’m trying to fix it but I’m not sure what to _do_.”  And it sounds a little like Barry’s asking _him_ for advice.  Asking him for a solution.

  Harry doesn’t have one.  “Does she know?” he asks, letting go of Barry’s arm, knowing he left bruises that will disappear in an hour.

  “No, I-, I just,” Barry stutters, running another hand through his hair, “I can’t.  I don’t know if she could handle knowing and, and I don’t want to do that to her.  I _can’t_ do that to her.”

  Harry clenches his fist and his teeth.  “And us?” he grits out, “Cisco and the me from this timeline.”

  Barry looks away and that’s all the answer Harry needs, but the speedster still says, “I don’t know really _what_ happened, but I get the feeling something _did_ happen.  I just…I don’t think it was good, either.”

  Harry nods and begins to stalk away, but he’s suddenly consumed with rage and grief and he’s whirling on Barry, his right fist swinging out and striking the speedster across the jaw.  It must be a testament to how guilty Barry feels when he doesn’t dodge it, the punch landing him on the floor in a sprawled out heap.  Harry then points a figure at the fallen man and says, voice low and cold, “Next time, Allen, when you’re about to do something stupid and reckless that has the potential to screw up everyone’s lives…  Don’t.”  Then he leaves because it’s too tempting to assault Barry again.

  A moment flashes in his mind.  He remembers seeing Cisco holding Caitlin in the dim medbay, after Jay’s perceived death.  Remembers her asking when the people she cares about will stop leaving her behind.  She had been so uncharacteristically somber and dull.  Nothing like the person he knows.  He remembers wanting to comfort her and telling her that sometimes people come back.  Like Jesse has, twice.  Like he has now.

  This Cisco, from this timeline, reminds him of the Cisco from that moment.  He wonders if this change is only superficial, or if it’s something bigger, something deeper.  Either way, he doesn’t tell Cisco about Dante, about how he would still be alive if it weren’t for Barry.  At least, not yet.  He believes she should know, but just not now.  Not when she looks like she might cave in at any second when she thinks no one is looking.

  He tries to talk to her.  Tries figure this out, to see if there can still be a ‘them’.  But it’s like Cisco has developed physic abilities, because she always finds an excuse to leave before he can even finish his sentence.  She avoiding the issue.  And he doesn’t know if he should be glad or terrified that she’s even aware there _is_ an issue.  He wonders what happened to make her run from him, like a scared animal trying to keep distance between it and a predator.

  So, instead he watches her and in doing so, he remembers why he loves her so much.  Her mind is still sharp as ever and they fall into relative easy step with one another.  It’s a shadow of the dynamic they established with long nights and constant banter, but he’s been starving for so long that he’ll take scraps if that’ll all he’s getting.  He almost tells her he loves her one day over a table covered in wires and circuit boards.  He almost kisses her when their alone in the Cortex and she says something witty and almost like her old self.  One morning after they pull an all-nighter, she hands him a mug full of coffee, strong and black, just how he likes it, and he’s positive that if he weren’t already neck deep in love, he’d have tripped right then and there.

  Jesse is giving him looks, the ones that tell him he’s an idiot, and he agrees.  One night, when they’re getting ready for bed, she tells him, “Dad, I…I think she still loves you.  She may not remember things from before, but the way she looks at you…you should do something.”

  He knows that.  It feels he’s quickly reaching the end of the road.  Feels the timeslot allotted for this opportunity slipping from him.  Fading from view like a sunset when he wants it to be a sun _rise_.  He doesn’t want it to end here.  Like this.  With Cisco unable to meet his eyes despite the easy quips she tosses at him.

  It’s late one night, when he and Cisco are working in the quiet eve of midnight, that Harry tries a different tactic.  It’s getting late.  They’re sitting at the same workbench.  Cisco is tinkering on her goggles and Harry is trying to improve various functions in the STAR Labs mainframe on a tablet (which isn’t working well), all the while trying to broach the subject that has been plague his mind for the past two weeks.

  He’s startled from his thoughts when Cisco gives out a surprised yelp and jumps a little in her chair.

  “What is it?” he asks, immediately at her side, “What’s wrong?”  He has his hand on her shoulder, the other hovering uselessly as he tries to figure out what’s wrong.

  “Nothing,” Cisco lets out a huff and sucks on her fingertip for a moment, “I just nicked myself again.  You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”  She says this wryly and looking down at her figure with a small smirk.

  “Here,” he says and he’s taking her hand gently in both of his, examining her pointer finger closely.  There’s a thick trail of blood coming from the jagged wound that curls along the sidewall of her nail.  He’ll need to stop the bleeding.  He grabs a rag from the work station and presses it to the injured finger.  “Hold that,” he instructs as he straightens to get the first-aid kit.  The one Caitlin makes sure is always well-stocked and easily found.

  Cisco protests the whole time.  “It’s not that bad, Harry.  Really.  I can take care of it.  I’ve been taking care of my own boo boos since I was eight, you know.”

  Harry ignores her and kneels beside her chair, holding out his hand expectantly while the other one riffles through the kit.

  “Aren’t your old man knees protesting right now?” she asks in youthful snark, but there’s an edge to it.  Like she’s trying to grasp at something but it’s quickly falling away, leaving her bare and open.  Like a curtain slipping off the rod.  She lets him have her hand, though, however hesitantly.

  When Harry looks up, he sees that same expression that has been haunting her eyes since he’s come back.  It makes him want to hold her and _make_ her believe that nothing will hurt her.  As long as he’s here, nothing will hurt her.

  He makes sure to be extra careful as he wipes the blood away and applies the disinfectant cream.  She hisses under her breath and he comes very close to kissing her finger in an attempt to take the pain away.  He concentrates on wrapping a water-proof band-aide around the wound.  When he looks up, he sees that her dark eyes have turned even darker and her breathing is now slightly husky.  And it seems like the sign he’s been waiting for.  The one that tells him, _yes_ , she’s still here.  She wants it.  Wants _them_.  So, instead of trying to talk about it, he tries something that worked before: he gives into temptation.  He knows full well the action might lead to instant rejection, but he places his lips gently against the bandaged digit, kissing it chastely.  There’s faint _smack_ of lips parting when he pulls away.  He watches her the whole time, watching her reaction closely.  Wondering how she’ll take the action.  The question.  The confession.

  Her breath hitches and tears brim her eyes.  “Please,” she whispers, pleading, “Don’t do this to me again.”

  Harry frowns.  “Do what?”

  She’s shaking her head, a tear slipping free, and she’s rolling the chair back and away from him, pulling her fingers from his grasp.  “I can’t do this.”

  “Do _what?”_ he says, instant.  Desperate.  Needing to _know_ after so many agonizing nights of _not_ knowing.  She’s getting up and moving away, trying to move passed him for the door.  He stands and catches her wrist because he’s not going to let her walk out on this conversation again.  They’re going to figure this out one way or the other.  And while he doesn’t know if he can stand her rejection, he damn well can’t stand to leave this unresolved.  Always wondering.  Never knowing.  “Don’t do what?” he demands.

  Cisco suddenly whirls on him, her hair flinging in a wide arch around her head.  Her eyes are heated and intense and Harry hasn’t seen her like this since he first met her.  Angry.  Hurt.  Lashing out at the thing that causes her pain.  _“This,”_ she hisses at him, twisting her wrist from his fingers.  He almost fights it, refusing to let go, but he doesn’t.  Because he’s afraid he might hurt her if he does.  He’s actually thankful she angry because it means she’s not going to run.  _“You,”_ and she says it like a curse, “Coming back and constantly trying to mess with me.  Trying to be nice and sweet and act like nothing happened so I’ll let my guard down.  Trying to string me along just so you can leave again.  Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but I’m not going to sit here and let you satisfy whatever temptations you’re not strong enough to resist.  Not again.  _Never_ again.”  She makes a swift, cutting motion with her hand, signaling the finality of that statement.  But she’s not looking at him anymore, her chin tilted down, her lips pursed, and her eyes staring at a point somewhere behind him.  She does that when she’s trying to keep her resolve.  Trying to stay strong and firm and tough in the face of adversity.

  He hates that she’s making that face towards him.  Hates that she thinks he’s some sort of misfortune she has to suffer through.  Hates that the Earth-2 Harrison Wells of this timeline did that to her.  And Harry never would have thought he’d want to kill himself out of stone cold rage, even if it _was_ a different timeline version of himself.  Because he remembers a different timeline, a different story, and he still wants it.  Still wants the right to hold her and touch her and memorize every part of her.

  And this is where it gets a little confusing.  Because this Cisco is still technically _his_ Cisco.  Timelines aren’t like the multiverse.  She’s not a doppelganger of the Cisco he remembers.  She _is_ the Cisco he remembers.  But not.  Not quite.  He knows she’ll taste the same, smell the same, _feel_ the same, but she’s a little off.  A little darker.  Less bright.  Less blinding.  She’s done things he doesn’t remember.  Been through events he doesn’t remember.  Because _he_ , ‘technically’, wasn’t there.  But he was.  He _was_ there.  He was there and he watched and saw and memorized, because he doesn’t believe the other version of himself wasn’t just as smitten as he is right now.  He doesn’t really know how he’s supposed to fix this.  He wants to say sorry, but that’s almost like apologizing for a mistake someone else made that you don’t even know about.  He’s wracking his brain trying to figure out what happened to bring her to this point.  And trying to think of a reason, _any_ reason, why he would leave her so broken.  So obviously hurt.

  He can’t think of a reason.  So, instead, he decides to treat this as if it _were_ his doppelganger from a different Earth that’s caused this damage.  Not him.  Not Earth-2 Harrison Wells.  Because it’s much easier to hate another person than it is to hate yourself.

  “Cisco,” he starts, taking a step closer, reaching out his with his hand. 

  “No,” she interrupts, stepping back and wrapping her arms around herself, protecting herself, “No, Harry.  I’m not doing this.  _You’re_ the one who said no.  You said we wouldn’t work.”

  “No,” he says, voice shaky because she’s _wrong_ and suddenly this all makes so much more sense, “No, I didn’t.  I didn’t say that, I—Cisco,” and her name catches in his throat because he can see she doesn’t believe him.

  “What are you _talking_ about?” she snaps, her face contorted in confusion and sorrow and such a painfully lost expression.  And he can’t stand it.  Can’t stand seeing her look like this.  Looking at _him_ like this.

  His hands rip through his hair, pulling at the dark curls and scrubbing at his scalp.  He steps closer and his voice stutters and halts and he’s unable to stop it as he tries to push his thoughts through his mouth.  “It wasn’t me.  It—that _man_ , wasn’t me.  It, it was a _different_ me, from a _different_ timeline.”

  Cisco laughs and it sounds bitter enough to shatter into fragile pieces.  “Seriously?  You’re going to pretend it wasn’t you?  That it wasn’t _you_ who came here looking for help and then betrayed us by making a deal with Zoom to steal Barry’s speed?  That it wasn’t _you_ who we risked our _lives for_ so we could save Jesse?  That it wasn’t _you_ who constantly pushed me and used my fears against me so I could use my powers?  That,” here her breath hitches, tears ghosting the rim of her eyes, “That it wasn’t you who kept giving me horrible coffee as a ‘thank you’ and kept tucking me in bed when I’d fall asleep at my computer?  That it wasn’t you who rejected me and then kissed me and left like it meant _nothing?”_   A tear slips and trails down the soft skin of her cheek.

  Watching the tear fall, watching Cisco struggle to keep the rest from following…it makes him desperate.  It makes his throat dry and his stomach roll itself up in knots.  Because, no.  No, that’s not what happened.  It’s not…it’s not…  He reaches out, his hands flying up and clutching at her shoulders.  _“No,”_ he shouts at her, tears blurring the bottom of his vision, almost hiding the surprise that slaps across her face.  He gives her a little shake when he repeats himself, his voice now low and horse and stuttering, “No.  No, I-…  _I_ didn’t say no.  I didn’t reject you.  I, I didn’t.  In the timeline I remember…we, we were going to work it out.  I was going to come back, and, and you would wait for me.  Whatever…circumstances happened…whatever would make me say ‘no’ to _you_ , they didn’t happen in the timeline _I_ remember.  I didn’t say no.  I…” he pauses a moment and his voice becomes a whisper when he adds, “I…I-I love you.”

  The silence is thick and suffocating and Harry feels like he’s trying to catch his breath.  Cisco is looking up at him with wide eyes, her mouth parted in shock.  “Oh,” she breaths.  There’s something in her eyes that change, like a line connecting one dot from the other.  A realization.  An understanding.  He sees it, sees the moment she finally comprehends what it is he’s saying.  Finally jumps to stand on the same page with him.  Her hands tremble as they reach out, tentatively latching onto the edges of his jacket were the zipper is sewn in, like she’s not sure if she can, if she’s allowed to have this.  She looks for all the world like someone who was told they lost the chance to win a valuable prize, only to find out she won it anyway.  That she could take it home, if she wanted.  If she only just reached out…  He’s waiting for her to reach out.

  He lifts one hand from her shoulder and gently brushes her hair away with the back of his fingers.  “I love you,” he says again, because something is telling him he needs to.  Something in the way Cisco looks at him, like she can’t quite believe it.

  And like a dam, her face caves in, hot tears flooding the valley below.  A sob bursts from her lips and she’s gasping, “I love you too,” in between one shaky intake of air and the next.

  His other hand comes up and he’s holding her face and kissing her even though she’s still crying wetly and he can taste the salty tears on his lips.  He wants to take it away.  Whatever makes her cling to him like he’s going to disappear.  Whatever makes her believe that he would leave her alone.  He wants to take whatever his other self has done and wash it away.  He starts to trail kisses across her cheek, trying to banish her pain.  Her arms snake around his waist, hands fisted in his jacket, and then she burying her face in his shoulder releasing her agony into his clothes.  His own arms are wrapping around her shoulders, holding her tight and it feels warm and whole and _right_.  He doesn’t bother to stop the few tears that leak from the corners of his eyes.  He closes his eyes and sighs because he was so terrified that he was going to lose this.  He rests his cheek against the top of her head and says roughly, “I’m here.  It’s okay.  I’m here.”

  “Please,” she chokes out, her voice muffled, “Don’t leave me again.”

  There’s a small smirk hooking the corner of his mouth despite everything, and he replies, “As you wish.”

  The laugh that follows is wet and heartfelt.

 

 

********** 

 

 

  Of course, Harry comes to the realization that he needs to go back to his Earth at some point.  There are things he needs to do.  Things he needs to make sure stay intact while he’s away.  Things like his company, his estate, and Jesse.  There are responsibilities that he can’t abandon, however tempting it is.  His company and estate have survived the year-long absence, but STAR Labs has definitely suffered for it.  And Jesse is a priority, has been for twenty-one years, and there is no way he can ever leave her alone.  Even if the new fledging speedster insists that she’d be fine.

  He talks with Jesse about this.  And about him and Cisco, which is an odd and embarrassing conversation to have with your daughter.  He has spent the better part of Jesse’s life preparing himself for when _she’ll_ bring a boy over, not when _he_ brings someone home.  Jesse is smiling at him, though, and it’s a relief to have her blessing in this.

  “Cisco’s a great person.  I’m glad you found someone,” Jesse says and her face turns soft and sad, “I just want you to be happy too.”

  He hugs her tightly and he cries a little and he wonders when he became so emotional.  He feverishly hopes this is just a onetime thing.

  He heads to the workshop, hoping to talk to Cisco.  But he finds Caitlin there instead, and from the look on her face, he can tell exactly where this conversation is going to go.  “Caitlin,” he nods, coming to stand before her with his arms crossed.  He doesn’t bother trying to avoid the issue.  Caitlin would only sink her teeth in deeper.

  “Harry,” she responds, a cool smile on her lips, “Cisco told me about you two.”  He’s not surprised.  He knows how dependent these two are on each other.  They’re a classic example of symbiotic relationship and he knows that he’ll have to share Cisco with Caitlin to some extent.  It’s a relief that he likes Caitlin, as he doesn’t like many people.  She’s strong and warm.  She makes a good friend and he can see how Cisco has come to love her so much.

  It also makes sense that Caitlin would be the person he has this conversation with, even though they’re adults and have moved passed adolescents.  He nods again, waiting for her to continue.

  She takes a small breath, like she’s trying to steady herself, but when she speaks, her voice is still shaky with fierce protectiveness.  “Harry, I know you don’t remember this timeline.  I know that the other timeline was different.  But I swear, if you break Cisco’s heart again,” her voice cracks but there’s a hard edge in her eyes and he’s not sure if he recognizes it belonging to her, “I will make you regret it.”

  And it’s disturbing to realizes that he believes her.  He sees her, standing before him, and he doesn’t see Caitlin Snow.  He sees Killer Frost.  And he wonders if Cisco wasn’t the only one who was screwed over by the timeline change.  Because this isn’t the Caitlin he knows.  Isn’t the person who accepted him onto the team when everyone else was still giving him suspicious glances.  It makes his feel weary and tired.  And even more angry at Barry.

  But being angry at Barry feels like being a hypocrite.  Hasn’t Harry already proven that he’s willing to do anything for those he loves?  Even at the price of others?  He and Barry are one in the same, and Harry hates it and hopes he’s learned his lesson.  He hopes that Barry has learned his lesson too.

  Harry nods to Caitlin, silent and hesitant.  She nods back and like a flip of a coin, her face softens and she smiles a small smile that warms her eyes.  “That being said, I _am_ happy for you two.  Cisco, she…she’s happier than I’ve seen her in a _long_ time.”  Caitlin’s hand comes to rest on his folded arms as she adds, “And I know that’s because of you.  So, thank you.”

  Harry looks away in the face of her gratitude.  He doesn’t deserve it.  He didn’t do anything to earn it.  He just selfishly fought for something he was too weak to live without.  There really is nothing to thank for that.  It’s honestly a miracle that Cisco feels the same way at all.  He used to not believe in miracles.

  Caitlin’s smile widens, her eyes crinkling around the corners.  “Now, if you were looking for Cisco, I think she’s in the Cortex,” she says knowingly.

  “Thanks,” he tells her and leaves, longing to run from that look in her eyes.  The one that everyone here seems to get when they think he’s being something other than selfish.  He’s not sure where they got this image of him.  He certainly didn’t give them any reasons to while he was here before.  It’s the same look that people give him in the Central City of his Earth.  Like he’s some hero they can look up to.  And it’s true, he’s trying to right his many wrongs, but he’s just a man trying to make his daughter proud.  His supposed ‘altruist’ acts are motivated by the selfish need to keep those he cares about from pushing him away.  He really is tired of being alone.

  He finds Cisco in the Cortex, like Caitlin said.  She’s munching on a Twizzler, staring at computer screen.  “I don’t know, seems fine to me,” she’s saying out loud, “Are you sure nothing clogging it up?”

  Harry frowns, casting a searching glance around the room.  There’s no one there.  Cisco notices him as he walks closer to her.  She turns her head towards him and that’s when he sees she has her phone pressed against her ear.  But he’s distracted from that by the smile she beams at him.  It’s full and bright and so much like he remembers and he’s glad to see it.  It’s far better than the guarded, haunted look.  She turns back to the monitor, the smile still in place.  He goes to sit in the empty chair next to her and wait.

  “Well,” she drawls, a mischievous glint in her eyes, “Have you hacked someone with strong firewalls lately?  You know, I wouldn’t put it passed the CIA or FBI to have a security protocol that leaves a virus on any potential hacker’s computer to make it overheat.  Just out of spite.  Wait, you didn’t try hacking _STAR Labs_ , did you?  Because, seriously, if you did, serves you right.”  Harry raises his eyebrows at her profile, watching her chuckle at the mystery person’s response.  There’s a pause, then she’s replying to the other person with a cocky, “You’re not the _only_ one that knows something about cyber security.  I ain’t no amateur, either.”  Another pause.  “Well, I only learn from the best.”  Pause.  “Oh, please.  Don’t sound so surprised.  You had to know I was taking notes.  I always love a challenge and out hacking you is definitely one of them.”  She laughs, loud and carefree.  “Uh uh.  Nope.  I’m never telling you any of _my_ secrets.  I’ll lose all my value if just _anyone_ can do what I do.”  The next pause is longer and Harry sees the exact moment when the conversation goes from friendly banter to serious.  It’s in the way Cisco’s face slowly drops from her smile to a sad frown.  The way she gives him a nervous glance out of the corner of her eye.  The way her free hand fidgets with the half eaten Twizzler on the desk.  Her voice is softer, more somber when she replies to the person on the phone, saying, “Yeah.  Yeah, things have been better lately.”  There’s a pause.  “I know.  Thanks, girl.  Listen, I’ll take a closer look at the photos you sent me and see if I can find the problem.  I’ll get back to you.  Yeah.  Okay, talk to you later.”

  After she hangs up, Harry asks, “Who was that?”

  She gives him a casual shrug, like she’s trying to cover the somber look that’s settled back over her features.  “Someone from Star City.  She works for Green Arrow.  They’re having problems with the computers overheating in the Arrow cave.”

  He nods, letting the subject end there.  “Are you busy tonight?” he asks slowly.  This is something he’s been wanting to ask for a long time.

  She gives him a thoughtful look.  “No.  Besides trying to figure out _this_ mess,” she points a thumb at the picture on the screen, “I’m pretty flexible.”

  Harry clears his throat suddenly and tries to banish away the abrupt onslaught of images his mind has conjured with those words.  He’s fairly sure that phrase means something different here, or at least in this context, and isn’t solely suggestive to…extracurricular activities.  Still.  She’s looking at him expectantly and he’s being an idiot, staring stupidly at his hands that suddenly find the need to clean his glasses thoroughly.  He clears his throat again because it’s still dry and he’s still trying to bring his thoughts back into order.  “No, I was…I…  Was wondering if you would join me for dinner.”

  He looks up in time to see her eyes narrow.  She tilts her head up and away from him so that she’s peering at him from the corner of her eye.  “As in a date?”

  “That _is_ a normal activity couples partake in, yes,” he says dryly, replacing his glasses to their rightful spot.

  She lowers her head until she’s looking up at him through her eyelashes, a smirk tugging the edges of her mouth.  “So, we’re a couple?”

  He narrows his eyes at her.  He knows she’s messing with him.  Knows she’s trying to get a reaction.  And it feels like coming home because there was a time he thought he’d never have this again.  He can’t help the small quirk of his lips as he fights the grin that’s threatening to split his face.  He replies with, “I don’t normally make a habit of kissing just any juvenile.”

  That has her turning to face him fully, her head cocked to the side, an indignant look contorting her expression.  “Excuse me?  That was so uncalled for.  Juveniles don’t pay bills.  _I_ pay bills.  They don’t know that there is, in fact, an _original_ Battlestar Galactica where Lorne Greene hangs up his duds to trek around space, but is still _just_ as awesome as a ship commander than he is a cowboy.  _I_ know that for a fact.  Juveniles don’t make sure their friends don’t die from stupid mechanical car failures.  Whereas, _I_ check everyone’s engines at least once a month.  And juveniles _especially_ don’t date grumpy dicks that should treat them better.  But, sadly, _I_ do.”

  Harry can only chuckle softly as the rant continues to fill the air around them.  Cisco is a whirl of motion.  Her face shifting from one expression to the other with the ease of practice, like a world class gymnast on the bars.  He could watch her all day and never lose fascination in her expressive face.

  When she finally falls silent, she’s looking at him in exasperation.  He asks simply, “Are you done?”

  She huffs at him.  “You started it,” she accuses, but she’s standing and waiting for him to follow suit.

  When he rises, he guides her out with an arm around her waist because he can, so he will.  They pass Caitlin when they’re in the hallway, heading towards the garage and the vans.  She smiles at them and says, “Have fun, you two.”

  He looks down at Cisco, watching her as she lists off all the great restaurants Central City has for first dates.  He thinks that all the pain and agony he’s gone through in the past year and a half is worth this.

  They end up going to a diner that Cisco swears has the best milkshakes.  And they are good, he has to admit.  The variety of flavors the diner has is also slightly astounding.  They’re walking through a park nearby, one arm looped around each other’s waist, each slurping down their own milkshake.  It’s dark but there’s plenty of lamplight to guide them along the path.  The silence between them is comforting, each lost to their own thoughts.  He finds himself not wanting to ruin the moment.  But he does, and he hates himself for it.

  “Cisco,” he starts, throwing his half-finished milkshake in a trash can as they walk by.

  “Hmm?” she hums lazily while thoughtfully chewing the end of her straw.  He never could understand why she does that.

  He pauses a moment, trying to collect the threads of his thought.  They’re starting to fray at the edges, flying loose with what ifs and could happens.  “There’s something we need to talk about.”

  Cisco looks up at him, her footsteps slowing to a halt.  He stops with her and lets her pull away so they’re facing each other.  She watches him with eyes that are dark and rich like earth tilled up in a field waiting for the crops to be planted.  Like she’s waiting to see if he’ll sow seeds of care or leave her to dry up in the summer sun, untouched and neglected.  He hates how she looks at him like that.  Like her happiness depends on him.  Because to him it feels like the other way around.

  “I can’t stay here,” he starts and realizes, too late, that this sounds like a goodbye.  And it’s probably the worst way to start this conversation because it’s far from a goodbye.

  Immediately Cisco’s face crashes from curiously apprehensive to furious.  He only has time to mentally kick himself before she unleashes her burning anger.  “What the hell, Harry?” she explodes, her voice a notch or two below yelling, “Are you serious, right now?”  And there’s oceans of hurt rippling in her eyes, the waves rolling over each other in raging upset.  Her hand clenches around her milkshake, the pressure denting the Styrofoam and threatening to rip it open.

  “Cisco, let me explain,” he says urgently.  She looks like she’s about to slap him.  Or throw her milkshake in his face.  Or walk away and he really doesn’t want _that._   But, by some miracle or some gracious trait of character, she stays.  Her arms fold around herself, like they do when she’s mad and upset, and she looks up at him with a firm jaw and hard eyes.  And she waits.  Waits for him to say his piece, and he’s so grateful for that because he’s not sure if he would be so patient if the roles were reversed.  “I have to go back at some point.  I can’t just abandon my home.  There are things and people I need to make sure stay safe and protected.  I need to make sure Jesse is going to be okay and—.”

  He’s cut off by a huffed out, “Harry.”  She rolls her eyes at him, her whole body following the motion, her arms uncrossing along the way.  “Is that it?” she asks in exasperation, “Look, I get it.  You have responsibilities.  So do I.  I understand we can’t just pack up and pick an Earth.  We’ll be taking long distance relationship to a whole new extreme, but yeah, I’m willing to make this work.  Just as long as you come back, I’ll be okay.”

  Harry nods, a fond smile touching his lips.  “I think I can manage that,” he says, drawing her close for a kiss.  He wonders if she even realizes just how easy she makes it.  Coming back to her.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this fic is turning out longer than I thought it would. I was thinking four chapters and now it's looking more like five. Good for you guys, huh?
> 
> Thanks for all the kudos and comment!

 

 

  Harry doesn’t really know what he did to deserve the life he lives.  Never has.  And probably, never will.  He looks back on the events of his life and sees the gradual progression into the man he’s become.  Isolated.  Aggressive.  Desperate.   It’s like looking into a kaleidoscope.  Like watching the lines of his youthful innocence bend and skew and shatter when he turns the knob of time, of growing from childhood to adulthood.

  And then something comes along.  Something you know you haven’t earned.  Something like Tess.  Like Jesse.  Like Cisco.  Like every friend he’s ever managed to make and keep.  He knows he hasn’t done anything to deserve their love or admiration.  At least, nothing yet.  Someday, he’ll make it worth it to them.  Someday.

  So when Cisco raises on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek right before he returns to his Earth, right in front of everyone…  He promises himself that he’ll make this worth it to her.  Somehow, he will.

  He almost doesn’t let go of Cisco’s hand.  There’s this tiny voice in his head that’s telling him if he jumps through that breach, this will be erased again.  That Cisco will be taken from him again.  But he has Barry’s solemn promise to make sure another timeline shift doesn’t happen.  And he realizes he can’t stay here forever.  Also, if he doesn’t let go _now_ and stop looking into her eyes…he might get impulsive and do something that’ll scar the team (and his _daughter_ ) for life.

  But just before Jesse zips him through the breach, just before he releases Cisco’s hand, he levels the new Harrison Wells (HR, he reminds himself) with a possessive glare because he may be a little paranoid at this point and is wary of any new factors in this equation.

  Jesse laughs at him when they reach Eath-2 and says, “Dad, I’m pretty sure you would have killed your doppelganger if looks could kill.”  And he glares at her too, because he doesn’t find this very amusing.

  And so it starts.  It takes the rest of the day for the anxiety to settle in.  He lays awake in bed staring at the ceiling, thinking that this is how it happened to first time.  Waiting.  Wondering.  Wishing he could be _sure_ but not really having a way to.  He could, theoretically, go through the breach and see Cisco and find out if anything has changed.  But then he’d be in the same boat when he came back.  Thinking about the things that could happen while he’s here on his Earth, having that fear linger in the back of his mind like a shadow that creeps and crawls across the ground.  It won’t solve any problems.  Only just keep pushing them into the future to be dealt with later.  So the best thing for him to do is wait.  Wait for Cisco to come to _him_ because that will be his sign that everything is fine.  That she remembers.

  But he’s always hated waiting.  As a scientist, he can make himself, but as a person, he really prefers not to.  It’s something that has gotten him in plenty of trouble, especially when he was younger.  But as age and maturity settled in, he has learned how to wait.  The trick is to distract himself.

  Flinging the covers off, he leaves the bedroom and goes to his office looking for something to work on.  Anything to work on.  He finds an old working theory and brushes the dust off.  It’s remarkable how wrong he was when first sketching out the idea.  Either he was having an off day or he’s learned much more since (and if some of the science he applies now are things he’s learned from Earth-1…he tries not to think about that because he’ll never concede to Earth-1 having a better grasp of the concept of the Copenhagen Interpretation.  It hits a little too close to home).  He spends the rest of the night developing the theory into something less cringe-worthy and doesn’t even notice the sun rise.  Jesse comes in at some point, takes one look and sighs before leaving.  She returns moments later with coffee and a bagel and tells him not to be late for work.

  He snorts at her retreating back and tells her, “It’s my company.  I can be late if I want to.”

  To which she replies, voice raised a little to be heard from down the hallway, “That’s a great example you’re setting for me, Dad.”

  He raises his own voice and calls, “Do as I say and not as I do.”  He hears her laugh and he smiles to himself.  He saves his work and gets ready for the day.

  It’s 2:38 pm when Cisco projects into his office…and right in the middle of his desk.  He jumps back at the sudden appearance, knocking his chair over in his process to get to a safe distance away.  It thuds against the carpet dully.  There’s a familiar gasp and he sees Cisco fizzle like static as she quickly backs away from him until she’s standing in the middle of the office.  She’s franticly running her hands over her body, grabbing her torso and thighs, before she pauses and gives him a bewildered look.

  “Are you alright?” he asks, concern spiking in his gut because he’s not sure what effect vibing in the middle of a solid object causes.  He quickly strides around the desk to her side.

  “Yeah,” she says, puzzled, “I’m fine.  That didn’t hurt.  I feel like it should’ve…” he tries to touch her arm and his hand passes right through her, making he snatch his hand back in surprise.  She finishes her sentence with a distracted, “…hurt.”  Her frown deepens as she looks down at her arm.  The she looks up to him and they stare at each other for a moment and then she reaches out with a tentative hand towards his chest…and it phases through him like he’s a ghost.  “Yeah,” she comments, taking her hand back.  Her voice firm and filled with unamused snark, “That’s not going to work for me.  I’m coming over this weekend.”

  He agrees.  “I expect quick results,” he says like she’s one of his employees.

  She smiles at him, eyes roaming his face, and he’s still glad to see her.  He’s just about to let his relieved smirk win its battle when her eyes become wide and she takes a step back to look at him from head to toe.  “I don’t believe it,” she utters, a gleeful awe lancing her voice.

  “What?” he asks, looking down at himself.

  Then she lets out a laugh, the bursting kind the accompanies disbelief.  “I don’t believe it,” she repeats, shaking her head, “You’re actually wearing something besides black.”  There’s a twinkle in her eye when she looks up.

  He glances down at his blue dress shirt and dark grey slacks before rolling his eyes in a huff.  “Yes, Ramon.  It might help that on this Earth, I actually have my entire wardrobe to choose from.”

  She’s narrowing her eyes at him, still studying the outfit.  “Jesse got this for you, didn’t she?” she asks, head tilted and there’s a playful tone that he knows could be the beginning of a bickering, infuriating argument if he lets it.

  And he lets it.  Because he knows she’s insinuating he has no sense of fashion and this suddenly feels normal and real and doable.  He thinks that this is one of the reasons he fell in love with her.  Because it feels like her mind is the sharpener and his mind is the knife.  So he smiles and that’s how they spent the rest of the day; hopping from one argument to the next.

  It’s almost 10:00 pm when Cisco leaves.  She tries to touch him again, a look of concentration pulling her brow together and her eyes closed.  But when her fingers reach his arm, they pass right through.  She hums a displeased hum and says, “See ya in a few days.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” he replies, watching her flicker and then disappear.  He sighs when she’s gone.  The room feels a little empty with her not here fill it with chatter and smiles.  He finishes his paperwork and leaves the lab at midnight.  That night he falls asleep dreaming of her.

  The next morning, he finds Jesse in the kitchen eating at the breakfast counter, swiveling a little in her stool.  Ten pancakes are piled onto her plate and she’s making quick work devouring them in one go.  “Don’t choke yourself,” he tells her as he passes by for the coffee machine.  He’s never been much of a breakfast person, preferring just a cup a coffee to get the day going.

  “I’m not going to choke,” she insists before shoving another fork full of cooked batter in her mouth.  There’s an unhealthy amount of syrup rippling around the edges of the plate.  He wrinkles his nose at it.

  “But you _will_ rote your teeth out,” he comments, pouring coffee into a mug.  He takes a sip, relishing the bitter liquid that trickles over his tongue.  He goes to sit beside his daughter at the counter.  It’s been years since they’ve eaten in the dining room.  He wonders if they should when Cisco comes over, but he quickly throws that thought away because that would make this too formal and Cisco is anything but formal.  It wasn’t like at the West house, where the dining room is a place for friends and family to gather.  In the Wells household, the dining room is a place for when you have guests over.  Not close friends or girlfriends that probably don’t even own a dress.  The nicest thing he’s ever seen Cisco wear are black slacks and a white blouse.

  “Something wrong?” Jesse asks and he turns to see green eyes staring at him, a small frown creasing the connecting brow.

  “No,” he assures her, “I was just thinking.  Cisco’s coming over this weekend.”

  Her concern shifts, jumps from a worried frown to a sly smirk.  “Oh, really?  Do I need to find another place to stay for the weekend?”

  He feels a small blush creep up his neck and sputters because even though he’s not a prude, that’s not the kind of joke you want to hear from your daughter.  About you.  “What?  No,” he says hastily, “I just—.”

  But she interrupts him with a laugh and a smile, “Dad, it’s alright.  I’m not a little girl anymore.  And while it’s disturbing to thinking about you that way, I’m not stupid enough to think it’s never going to happen.  Just…make sure I’m not around, will you?  That’s all I ask.  For both our sakes.”

  Now they’re both blushing and he fidgets with his mug while she pushes her half eaten plate of ten pancakes away.  But he nods, mumbling, “Yeah.  I can do that.”

  They end the awkward moment with them each saying goodbye and each heading to their respective responsibilities.  School and work.

  The next few days drag on.  It’s with a sense of relief that the weekend comes and Cisco opens a breach right into his office.  He smiles at her and the first thing she does is pull him into a kiss.  And he sighs, memorizing the way she kisses and the way it feels _._   Warm.  Textured.  Wet.  He feels her calloused fingers run through his hair and feels her body heat as she presses against him and the memory of seeing her but not being able to touch her dissipates.

  This is how is should feel.  She hums in agreement.

  Jesse, it turns out, has made a small itinerary for when Cisco arrives.  She gives Cisco a blue STAR Labs baseball cap and Harry can’t help laughing at Cisco’s face when she realizes that on Earth-2 she’s a dead murder, so she needs a disguise.  Of course, she’s a good sport about it.  Just ties her back and loops the ponytail through the back of the hat.

  They go to Jesse’s school.  To the park that’s next to the campus.  To a diner that has the best milkshakes (Cisco gives him a sly smile).  They walk everywhere and Cisco looks at everything with the awe of a child and it makes him smile to see it.  Even when they get odd stares.

  By dinner time, they’re heading home and Jesse whips up some of her delicious garlic chicken and they eat it in the kitchen, legs dangling from the bar stools.  Then Jesse is showing Cisco a magazine (and he honestly doesn’t know where she kept it because he was sure he destroyed all the ones she brought home) with an article listing the top twenty most attractive male celebrities of 2014 and Cisco laughs for a good two minutes.  _“Wow, Harry, you barely squeaked in there as number twenty.”_  He suffers from their teasing for the next thirty minutes and then Jesse is heading for the door, disappearing with a wave and a wink.

  Harry comes out of the kitchen and into the living room with two glasses of wine and spots Cisco looking down at a photo in her hands.  It’s one of Tess and him.  Her shoulders stiffen slightly when she realizes that he’s in the room and then she’s quickly placing the frame back in its spot, only to knock over two other photos of Jesse.  “Oh, shit,” she curses and is a mess of motion, trying to stand the frames up right and bumping three more pictures over, two tumbling off the mantel and landing on wood floor.

  “Throwing my things around?” he asks, placing the wine glasses on an end table and bending to pick up a fallen photo.  It’s one of his parents, before his father got sick.

  “I am _so_ sorry,” she babbles, an arm full of pictures that she’s looking over carefully, “I don’t think any of them broke.”  Her blush deepens and she looks like she’s trying to remember where each photo went.

  “Here,” he says, taking the stack of framed memories from her, “I’ll put them back later.”  He sets them on an arm chair next to the fireplace.

  “I’m sorry,” she’s still saying, “Everyone tells me I should stop touching other people’s things.”

  “They’re probably right,” he tells her with a smirk, offering her a glass of wine.

  She takes it hesitantly and there’s something like doubt on her face but it’s gone so fast he has to wonder if he imagined it.  She takes a sip, her gaze roaming around the room.  “Your house is nice.  A little on the big side, for my humble taste, but still nice.  It’s _way_ better than Dr. Wells’ too.  His was a post-modern nightmare.  Impersonal as hell.”

  And there it is.  The comparison to a dead man.  He wonders if they even realize they do it.  Probably not.  He looks around the room.  Most of it was decorated by Tess.  There were a few things that he or Jesse have added or replaced but…and maybe it was from some sort of silent agreement, because they’ve mostly left everything the same.  “Yes, well,” he starts, “I’m sure if your Harrison Wells had been married, his home would’ve looked much different.”

  She snorts.  “Yeah, no.  You’re the only Harrison Wells that’s ever been _my_ Harrison Wells.”  He frowns, giving her a sidelong look.  Her face turns incredulous.  “What, really?  Ew, no.  We weren’t like that.  He was a father figure, like Joe.  Nothing besides that.  I mean, sure he was attractive, obviously,” and she elbows him in the arm, “But he wasn’t really my type.”

  “Your type?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at her.

  “Yeah,” she shrugs, a grin fighting for dominance over the fake casual look, “I prefer blue eyed, brilliant, cranky dicks over blue eyed, brilliant, calculating psychopaths.”

  He huffs out a short laugh and shakes his head.  “Brat,” he mutters.

  “Jerk,” she laughs, shoving his arm.  Then she turns a little more somber before adding, “I mean, you two really _are_ very different people.  Kinda like you and HR.  And I admit, I did this at first too, but…the others sometimes get so caught up in the face thing that they don’t even realize just how _different_ you are.  I mean, HR is obvious.  The guy could talk the whole day without coming up for air once.  Dr. Wells, he—…he always had this look.  Like he was calculating every single thing in his head.  I used to think it was just because he was a genius, but…now I know it’s because he was playing us.  You, though.  You let your emotions a little closer to the surface.  It makes you a little more spontaneous.  A little less predictable.”  She gives him a smile.  “And that’s something I like about you.”

  He looks at her and there must be something in the way the lights reflect off her eyes or her smile fills her face.  Or maybe it’s the way that she’s looking at him like she’s content and happy just being with him.  Because it’s pulling him in like a magnet and he’s grabbing her wine glass and putting both their drinks on the nearest flat surface (the mantel) and attacking her lips with a desperate hunger he didn’t realize was festering inside of him.  His tongue delves into her mouth and he pushes his hands up her shirt, feeling the warm, soft skin along her ribs and spin.  He feels her shiver and moan and press closer to him, throwing her arms around his shoulders and running her fingers in his hair.

  And suddenly there’s a hunger in the kiss.  A want.  A need.  He steers them to the couch and they collapse on it with Cisco underneath him.  She gasps when he starts to trail kisses along her jaw and down her neck, immediately annoyed when he meets the fabric of her shirt.  He straightens, pulling her him with him, and in two quick motions, he has her shirtless.  He pauses at the sight of her Iron Man bra but he just smiles and kisses her again, wondering if her underwear matches.  And determined to find out.

  She gasps again when he begins to explore her chest with his mouth but stops him when his hand reaches underneath her and his fingers fumble with the bra clasp.  “Wait,” she says, breathless.  He stops and pulls away a little and he can feel a seed of doubt suddenly forming in the pitch of his stomach.  Her brow is scrunched up in a small frown, “We can’t do this on your couch.”

  He stares at her for a moment.  And laughs a little in relief and wonder.  He leans back in, kissing her lips.  She pushes him away gently.  “I’m serious,” she insists, “We’re going to stain something.  And couches are impossible to clean.”

  “I’ll buy a new one,” he mumbles, going for her jaw and sucking on the skin there.

  “No,” she says, pushing him again, this time firmer and farther away, “We’re not doing it here.”

  There’s a thirty-second stare down.  Then he asks, “Why?”

  Her eyes lower and move away from him like she’s embarrassed by the answer.  “It just…feels too public.”

  He narrows his eyes at her.  “We’re in my house.  And Jesse isn’t coming home tonight.”

  “Yeah, I know, but it still feels too…open.  Can’t we just take this to your room?”

  “So we can soil my sheets?”

  “Well,” and she gives him an impish grin, “Bed sheets _are_ a lot easier to clean.”

  He flattens his lips into a thin line, exasperation building, but he can tell he won’t be winning this battle.  So he climbs off of her and scoops her up in his arms and strides quickly towards the stairs.  His pace quickens when Cisco starts running her tongue along his jaw and nibbling his ear.

  And he’s never thought his house was too big until now because it seems to take forever to reach his room.

  Afterwards, when Harry’s laying on his back and Cisco’s draped over him like a blanket, the actual blankets covering their torsos, and he’s marveling at how soft she is, he remembers that this is what it’s like to be happy.  He runs his fingers through her hair, combing out the tangles he put there.  She’s breathing deep and even and he knows she’s asleep.  And he thinks that these are the moments he will remember.  These are the moments he will cherish.  He falls asleep with Cisco’s skin pressed against him and her breathe ghosting over his chest.

  In the morning, they go on a mini-expedition to find his glasses which he doesn’t even remember taking off last night (they find them under the coffee table).  And then they spend breakfast drinking coffee and not eating because Cisco doesn’t eat in the mornings either.  She shows him how she likes her coffee and he wrinkles his nose at the amount of creamer and sugar she puts in it.  Then they take a shower and actually spend it cleaning themselves.  Which he finds nice but weird because that’s not what he thought she had in mind when she hopped in with him.  He learns her conditioning ritual and she bemoans Jesse’s choice in hair products.  It’s casual and easy.  Like they skipped the honeymoon phase and jumped right into the ten-years-married phase.  Like when you become so comfortable with the person next to you, you don’t really think twice about them being there.  And he knows this feeling it due to the amount of time they’ve spent in her workshop.  The amount of time they’ve spent working together.  Working besides each other.  Leaning in close over a project, sharing breath and snarks.  Finishing each other’s sentences and thoughts.  Handing each other tools without even having to specify which out.  He thinks that they fall together like long lost puzzle pieces.  And he thought he’d never feel this again.  Not after Tess.

  Then he gets a call from work and the rest of the day is spent with Cisco trailing after Jesse while Harry has to attend to an emergency at the lab.  He never takes kindly to people trying to steal from him, but he’s especially peeved that this thief got away with it.  And that they chose to do it _during_ Cisco’s visit because it’s well after midnight by the time he gets home.

  He finds his girls in the family room, both passed out on the couch in front of the TV, the main menu for Star Trek’s original series playing on loop.  He smirks when he realizes it’s the fourth season.  He remembers Cisco being jealous when she found out there are seven seasons on his Earth.  He also notes that every snack littering the floor is indigenous to Earth-2.  He shakes his head, a warmth developing in his chest and he thanks whoever’s listening that these two get along so well.  He’s beginning to believe he can have both, that he doesn’t have to choose.  And it really is a miracle because every other woman he’s tried to date after Tess, Jesse has taken an immediate and intense disliking to.  He could never figure out why.

  Cisco leaves the next morning.  And he can feel residue of her kiss on his lips all day.

  After that weekend, she starts projecting in for at least a couple minutes a day.  He’s not sure how she always knows when he’s alone, but somehow she does and he can’t find it in himself to complain when he looks up to see her smiling face.  Even when he spills his coffee all over himself in surprise more than once.

  Sometimes when she pops in, she’s working on something and only has half her concentration on him.  She complains about HR, about metahumans, and Central City traffic.  Sometimes she has this look in her eyes that tells him she misses him and he thinks he probably has the same look.  Those are the days she opens a portal and he doesn’t get any work done.

  One evening, she vibes in front of him while he’s eating a Big Belly Burger for dinner in his personal lab.  He’s sitting at his computer, working on developing an idea to capture a metahuman that can turn itself into mist.  It may be that most of this Earth’s criminal metas are in prison on Earth-1, but there are some that managed to escape Zoom’s influence.  And they’re more than enough to keep Jesse busy.  He smiles fondly when Cisco appears (and he’s getting used to her popping in abruptly).  She’s standing in between the station he’s sitting at and a large worktable behind her that covered in three different projects.  Her arms are crossed but, this time, it looks more stern and cold then upset and she has this look in her eyes that he’s never seen before.  His smile dies an instant, painless death.  “You knew, didn’t you?” she asks him.  Her voice is dulled and angry and he immediately knows what she’s talking about and it makes his jaw clench and his stomach churn, the half burger he just ate bubbling uneasily.  She’s only ever had that tone of voice about one thing.  She nods at the look on his face, reading the truth from him like she reads blueprints.  “I mean, of course you did.  You remember the other timeline.  You remember that Dante didn’t die in it.  You knew Barry changed that.  That he changed everything and now Dante’s dead and Caitlin has powers that are trying to turn her into Killer Frost.”

  Harry frowns, thinking about Caitlin’s threat.  The way her eyes seemed to simmer a little while she spoke.  But he doesn’t dwell on it because Cisco’s giving him a betrayed look and he needs to say something.  “I was going to tell you,” he says, starting with the truth.

  “Oh, really,” she says, sarcasm and scorn pooling from her mouth and eyes but there’s also hurt in the way her folded arms tighten around her and she shifts on her feet like she wants to run but won’t.  “You know, I forgave Barry,” and she pauses, looking up and to the side, shaking her head, “I actually forgave him for saving his own family and not mine because I realized that, yeah, he was right.”  She looks down, shrugging a little.  “If he had saved Dante, he would have just screwed everything up even more and, sure, Dante would be alive but what if someone else got hurt because I was being selfish?”  She shakes her head again, eyes searching the drawers he keeps full of spare parts.  “But I didn’t think that maybe _I_ was that person.  _I_ was the one who’s life was messed up because someone else was being selfish.  And having it be a friend who did it is the worst feeling in the world.  I’m tired finding out the people I think care about me _don’t_ care.  And I’m tired of people looking at me and thinking I’m going to crack at any moment.”  She says this and she’s looking at him and he knows who she’s talking about.  And he suddenly wonders why he thought she couldn’t handle the truth.  Because here she is and she _knows_ and she’s not cracking under the strain.  No.  She’s a fiery hurricane ready to blow anyone away that might try hurting her again.  No, she’s looking at him and it’s almost like she’s looking for a reason to make _him_ one of those unfortunate souls to get blown away.

  He stands and makes his way around the computer station.  She follows him with her eyes him, her body turning so that she’s facing him.  “Cisco,” he says softly, “I’m sorry.”  And that, of course, is all he really _can_ say.  Sorry for her brother.  Sorry for Barry’s mistake.  Sorry that he underestimated her (again).  Sorry that she has to go through this.

  Her face falls from angry and guarded to dull and weary.  Her shoulders drop and it seems like all the energy is sapped out of her like a drain being unplugged.  He wants to wrap his arms around her and give her comfort in the only way he knows how.  Presence.  Touch.  But he can’t.

  She sighs, long and heavy.  “I’m tired, Harry,” she whispers and he knows that she’s not just talking about her physical state.

  “I know,” he replies because he’s been there before.  He’s felt that before, after Tess.  But back then he had Jesse and a newly built company to distract him.  He also didn’t have to work with the man who killed his wife in that car accident.  And that was probably a good thing because he might have been committed for murder.  Cisco has much more strength of character than he does.  It’s something he’s working on, God help him.

  Cisco only nods.  “I have to go back.  Caitlin needs me.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Do you want me to come over?” he asks.

  “No,” she tells him and he feels like there’s a rubber band constricting his chest.

  He watches her disappear with a small wave.  And he thinks that it’s a good thing he and Barry are on different Earth’s right now.

 

 

********

 

 

  It’s not long after that when she goes a whole day without popping in and he spends the whole day waiting.  He tells himself that she’s probably busy and will project over sometime today in a babbling, apologetic mess.

  But she never shows.

  And he’s almost worked himself into a mini-panic because it’s been almost a month and she has never missed a day and now she’s missed two.  He waits until 2:00 pm the next day before he’s jumping through the breach, ready to kill someone.

  He’s greeted by an empty breach room and then a silent Cortex filled with a worried looking team.  They’re all too focused on the TV to immediately notice him striding in and it’s HR that sees him first.  The man was pacing and he does a double take when he sees Harry walk in.  “Uh,” he says to the others, “That-that’s the other me, right?  Not a new one?  Because, _that_ ,” he gives off a nervous laugh, “Could be bad.”

  “Harry?” Caitlin’s saying, confusion drawing lines between her brow.  It’s a poor mask for the worry lines that already reside there.

  Everyone is now looking at Harry and it only takes him half a second to see that Cisco, Barry, and Joe are missing.  “Where’s Cisco?” he asks, not wasting time.  Not wasting one more second because this is how it happened last time.  This is how he lost her last time.

  Iris is already looking back at the TV which is showing a news report about…aliens attacking Earth?  He thinks he might have read that wrong.  She shakes her head, concern and fear filling her dark eyes.  “Trying to save the world along with everyone else,” she says, answering his question.

  ‘Everyone else’, it turns out, consists of Barry, Team Arrow, who he’s met once, a superhero from another Earth, and a group of time travelers called The Legends.  And he thinks he might have a heart attack because now there are _more_ people he has to worry about messing with the timeline.

  He’s not even sure what to think about the ‘aliens’ part.  Just watches the news with the rest of the team and listens to the chatter over the comm links with squinted eyes and pressed lips.  It doesn’t take him long to realize that Cisco is on the ship trying to keep the bomb from killing everyone.  And his heart jumps in his throat because he’ll never be okay with his girls being in danger.

  When it’s over and done and everyone that was in the field starts piling into an abandoned STAR Labs hanger, Harry is a flurry of motion to get there and wastes no time finding Cisco.  He sees her talking excitedly with a blonde woman wearing glasses he vaguely remembers from a year ago.  He doesn’t wait for the conversation to end before he’s pulling Cisco away, dragging her to somewhere more private.

  “Harry?  What’s wrong?” she’s asking but he doesn’t answer until he’s sure no one can hear them.

  “You missed two days,” he says by way of explanation.  It’s not a great one and it sounds like he’s starting up in the middle of a conversation because in his head, he is.

  And Cisco, with her beautifully quick mind, doesn’t need anything more because she gets it instantly.  She places a hand on his forearm.  “I know,” she says, “I’m sorry.  I…” and her eyes drop to the floor like dead weights, “I forgot.  In all the mess and confusion…I just…I didn’t even remember until I saw you just now.”  She’s looking up at him when she adds, “I’m so sorry.”  And he wonders if she even understands.  Even knows.  That every day, when he sees her face, the knot in his chest loosens a little.  And when he didn’t see her yesterday or the day before, he thought he might explode because he’s lost too many people to not have issues.  She places her other hand on his cheek and he takes comfort in the warmth he feels.  The look she gives him, it’s a knowing one and he’s suddenly struck by her depth of understanding.  And he thinks how horribly, terribly, lucky he is that he has someone who gets it.  And it’s a horrible, terrible thing to think, but he’s glad she does.

  That night, after everyone has left, she takes him to her apartment.  It’s the first time he’s been to her home and as he looks around, he smiles fondly because everything whispers _Cisco_ softly.  It’s not every big.  A little cramped for his tastes, but she doesn’t seem to mind.  Just flits through the space as she tries to straighten things a little, weaving through the furniture with the ease of practice.  He catches her wrist when she heads towards the dishes, blushing and embarrassed because she didn’t remember that her apartment was a _mess_ and she’ll just quickly clean those and…he shuts her up with a kiss, a hand bracing the back of her neck.  His other hand tugs gently at the hem of her shirt before his fingers reach under to ghost over the soft skin there.  She shivers and pulls away from the kiss, her eyes as dark as the night sky void of stars.  “I didn’t make my bed,” she says.

  “I don’t care,” he tells her.

  And Cisco is leading him down a short hallway into her room and they spend the night decidedly _not_ making her bed.  Unless making it an absolute mess counts.  He falls asleep with Cisco’s back pulled up against his chest, his nose in her hair, and his head a blissful buzz.

  And wakes up with a jolt of adrenaline, sits up, and looks around the room.  Sunbeams filter through the window shades, giving everything a warm glow.  He’s wondering what woke him up, what put him on edge, when he hears it.  It sounds like someone’s moving around in the apartment.

  “Harry?” he hears Cisco mumble groggily.  She moves, pushing herself up beside him.

  He gets up, sparing a moment to pick up his previously discarded pants and shove his feet through the legs, zipping up but not bothering the fasten the button.  On his way to the door, he grabs the nearest thing there is to a weapon: a solid metal model of the Deathstar.

  “Harry, what are you doing?” Cisco says, too loudly for his comfort.

  He shushes her with a finger against his lips, giving her a _stay here_ look and hoping she actually listens to him.  He peeks around the door frame.  He hears someone riffling through cupboards in the kitchen and clenches his jaw, pursing his lips into a flat line.  Somebody is in the apartment.  And they aren’t leaving without at least a skull fracture because there’s _no_ way he’s going to let this slide.  Not with Cisco’s safety in the equation.

  It takes him three careful steps to reach the archway leading to the main room.  He steadies himself, taking a quick glance around the wall.  He sees the vague shape of a person shifting through a drawer in the half second he has eyes in the room.  He takes a deep breath, muscles coiled and ready, and launches himself from his spot.  He whirls around the corner, arm raised and ready to attack…a plump old woman.

  He stops his arm in mid-air.  The elderly lady jumps in surprise at his sudden appearance and the apartment is filled with a terrified yelp.  She ducks her head behind her quickly raised hands.

  “Mrs. Mosby?” Cisco says from behind him and then she there, dressed in a pair of hastily thrown on sleeping shorts and _his_ shirt.  With a firm hand, she’s lowering his arm and taking the model Deathstar from his hand and placing it on the kitchen counter.  “I am _so_ sorry.  I forgot it was Monday,” she babbles, apologetic and embarrassed, going to Mrs. Mosby’s side, “Are you alright?”

  “Oh, fine, dear.  He just gave me a right scare, is all,” the woman says, clutching a hand to her chest.

  Harry isn’t quite sure what to think as he watches Cisco steer Mrs. Mosby to the table and sits her down in a chair.  He watches as Cisco fusses and the elderly woman tries to bat her away.  He decides he finds it amusing because he’s never seen Cisco be so…mother hen.  And then Mrs. Mosby is standing and tutting, saying, “Now, I’ve clearly interrupted something, dear,” she throws Harry a glance and her eyes travel down to his unbuttoned pants, “And _I’m_ the one who’s sorry.  It was terribly rude of me to assume.  But it’s just you never bring any boys home, I never even thought to ask.”  Then she leans closer to Cisco, her voice lowering and she asks with another sidelong glance at him, “I hope you’re using protection.”  This has Cisco sputtering and turning bright red and unable to look anyone in the eye before nodding quickly.  “Good,” Mrs. Mosby says, linking her arm through Cisco’s and walking towards the door.  As they walk away, she leans close to Cisco’s ear and says, “Oh my, he _is_ such a handsome man, but don’t you think he’s a little old for you, dear?”

  He wonders if Mrs. Mosby knows he can still hear her.

  Cisco is quick to lovingly push the elderly lady out the door after that.  “My bad,” she apologizes once the door’s closed, “I totally forgot it was Monday.”

  Harry leans against the counter and folds his arms loosely as she comes back into the kitchen.  “Is she your house cleaner?” he asks jokingly, “Because if she is, you should fire her.”  He gives a pointed look to the pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

  “What?  No,” she replies and actually looks a little offended, “She’s my neighbor.  You know, not everyone can afford to have other people clean their house.”

  He just rolls his eyes.  “So your neighbor has a key to your apartment?”

  Cisco narrows her eyes and her jaw juts a little to the side.  She crosses her arms and he’s momentarily distracted by how the fabric of his shirt stretches across her breasts.  “I had to go out of town for a week a few years ago.  I asked her to look after the apartment.”  Her eyes do a wide sweep around the room.  “And she just…sort of never stopped.  She comes over every Monday to make sure I have food in the fridge and to clean.  I try to have everything put away by then but sometimes,” she shrugs, “I never have time to do it.”  Her eyes lower a little, staring at a point on the counter next to him, and she nods, adding, “She’s been really good to me.”

  And Harry will probably never stop being amazed at the amount of people who ‘adopt’ Cisco into their lives.  It’s remarkable, really, how she makes them want to protect her.  Not for the first time, he wonders why her family is one of the exceptions.

  He hums and says with a small smirk, “Then I guess I can learn to tolerate her.”

  Cisco laughs, “Oh, trust me, you’ll learn to love her.”

  They spend the rest of the morning drinking coffee and watching _The Princess Bride_ even though they’ve both seen it many times and Cisco quotes the whole movie to him.  By noon Caitlin is calling Cisco and asking where they are.  It seems there’s a press conference at three and the President is going to be honoring the heroes that saved Central City and, by extension, the world.  Before they leave the apartment, Cisco hands him a familiar baseball cap and avoids his questioning gaze.  He decides not to ask, but files away the information.  Just places the cap on his head, now knowing what happened to it.

  When they arrive at the hanger where everyone is gathered, Barry comes up to them.  “Hey, guys.  It’s about time you got here,” he says with a cheeky smile.

  Harry’s presence earns him a few odd looks.  A tall man with dark hair and button eyes gives him a confused frown and switches his gaze from Harry to HR, who is milling around talking into some sort of recording device.  “Wait, there are two of you?” he asks and an older man with thick glasses, and who looks vaguely familiar to Harry, launches into an explanation on the multiverse.  He also isn’t shy about his part in the discovery.  Everyone listening seems to ignore the boasting, chalking it up as normal and even expected.  At some point, the Green Arrow (and Harry still finds it ironic that it’s _Oliver_ and not _Robert_ Queen) comes up to Cisco and asks if she wants to stand with the rest of them during the press conference.

  “Me?” she asks in confused wonder, eyebrows raised and finger pointed at herself, “Um, no thanks.  I didn’t really do anything.”

  “You saved our asses,” a burly man says, burn scares littering his face.

  “Yeah,” Cisco says, “Like, 65 years ago and with Felicity’s help.”  Harry frowns in confusion, wondering exactly how much he missed.  He and Cisco didn’t do much talking last night so he feels like he’s swimming in rapids trying to keep up with conversation.

  “You helped save ours too.  And that was only yesterday,” says a woman with wavy blonde hair and a strong chin.  The tall man nods in agreement.

  Cisco shakes her head, “I only vibed you guys.  You’re the ones who got yourself out and Nate was the one who picked you up.”

  “Aren’t you the one who figured out how to locate them?” the man with glasses asks.

  “No, that was definitely a team effort,” Cisco says, shooting down the attempted praise with well-practiced movements.  Too well-practiced, in Harry’s opinion.

  It’s Green Arrow that interrupts with, “Well, the offer still stands.  There were more heroes fighting against the Dominators than just those wearing a mask and I think the world might benefit in knowing that.”  And with that, he walks away.  Harry is tempted to roll his eyes at the sentiment but he takes one look at Cisco and refrains.  She’s blushing and looking incredibly pleased with herself.  Pleased in the genuine way that’s seen so rarely on her face.

  Cisco doesn’t join the heroes on the stage.  Nor do the other ‘non-superhero’ members that were asked.  Harry doesn’t go to the press conference (too many cameras) and instead watches it on TV with HR, Wally, and Caitlin at the West house.  It’s there he gets filled in on everything.

  He leaves the next day.  Cisco gives him a breach link that will allow him to open a breach wherever and whenever he pleases.  It also has a communications feature and he uses it the morning after he arrives home.  He’s making coffee and reading the news when he fishes the link out of his pocket and gives it a thoughtful stare.  It’s 6:30 am and there’s no doubt Cisco will be asleep, barring any emergencies.  With a smirk and a chuckle he presses one of the buttons and waits.

  _“What?”_ comes the sleepy voice of the brat he fell in love with, _“Who’s this?  Kara?”_

  “Guess again,” he says and the next half hour is full of Cisco complaining about rude jerks who call their sleep-deprived girlfriends.  The ride to work has never been so lively and he hangs up with a “See you later” right before walking into the lab.  He can’t stop the smile that touches his lips like a long lost trinket, one that you spent so much time and energy looking for.  He’ll be forever grateful to have a way of reaching Cisco now.  Grateful that he doesn’t have wait for her to reach out to him.

  He hates waiting.

  He sees her at lunch.  And she rants and raves at him for a good thirty minutes about how she only had three hours of sleep last night because of _some_ one.  But it starts another routine between them.  He calls her before work.  She complains.  She projects herself over at some point during the day.  And complains again.  Sometimes she merely glowers, arms crossed and eyebrows frowned low over her eyes, before disappearing without a word.  He doesn’t stop, though.  And he doesn’t admit to anyone that he’s enjoying this.

  And then Christmas is around the corner and he learns about Savitar for the first time.  He jumps Earths after getting an urgent call from Caitlin and catches the tail end of chaos.  Everyone is still reeling and Cisco is trying to hold everything together and then Barry is flinging another evil speedster into the Speed Force.  And Harry is wondering if it’ll ever end.

  He’s very disturbed when he hears about the ‘prophecy’ and what that stone did to Cisco.

  He follows Cisco to her apartment and he lets her cry on him and doesn’t even complain when his shirt gets soaked with her snot.  It’s gross but he finds a crying Cisco infinitely better than a numb one.

  “You fought it,” he tells her because he feels like that’s the important part she’s forgetting, “You won.”

  “Not without help,” she reminds him.

  They fall asleep on the couch and it eats his back up but he thinks it’s worth it when in the morning she smiles sleepily at him, her chin resting on his chest and her figure tracing the lines of his jaw.

 

 

*********

 

 

  “You want to take me to La Mesa?  On a date?  Isn’t that, like, the fanciest restaurant in Earth-2 Central City?” Cisco asks and Harry frowns at her genuine surprise.

  “One of them, yes,” he replies

  “But won’t people think I’m Reverb?” she points out and he will never stop finding it ironic that they each have the faces of murders on each other’s worlds.

  “HR showed me his facial transmogrification technology.  He said we can borrow it.”

  “You actually talked to HR?”  She gives him a disbelieving look.

  “Yes.  I talk to him.  Though it’s more like he talks to me,” he says in irritation, “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Right,” she says, nodding almost to herself, “The date.  _Our_ date.  You want to go somewhere fancy.”

  He frowns are her reaction.  “Is something wrong with that?”

  Her dark eyes immediately shift away from his gaze, dropping to the tablet in her hand as her other hand reaches up to the tuck a few strands of hair behind her ear.  She shakes her head and says, “No, no, it’s fine,” in a tone that sounds falsely assuring.  It’s how he knows she’s lying.

  So he decides to point it out, in case she thought she were actually fooling him.  “You’re lying.”  The blush that seeps into the tips of her ears is all the admission he needs.  He narrows his eyes.  “Why are you lying to me about this?”

  She closes her eyes for a moment and gives her head a firm, jerky shake, before reopening them and shooting him a small, sincere smile.  “Nothing, it’s stupid.  Really.  I’d love to go.”

  “We don’t have to go,” he says hesitantly.  Normally, women jump at the chance to eat somewhere lavish.  Of course, Cisco isn’t a normal woman.  He wonders why she doesn’t want to go.

  But she’s smiling at him even wider, dropping a hand on his.  “Really, Harry.  It’ll be awesome.  I’m sure they’ll be impressed when I understand what the menu says.”

  He thinks about arguing but decides to drop it.

  The weekend comes and he’s standing in his living room, dressed in one of his finest suits, and Jesse is fussing with his collar in a classic womanly manner.  It reminds him of his mother before his first prom and, coincidentally, his first date.  His daughter steps back and gives him a decisive nod before saying, “You look good, Dad.  Maybe you can fool her into thinking you’re not almost fifty.”

  He glares at her.  “I’m not almost fifty.”

  “Five years is pretty close,” she points out.

  “Six,” he corrects her.

  “Only if you round down,” she shoots back with a smirk.

  He narrows his eyes at her for a moment.  Then he comments, “I should have taught you better manners.”

  “Well, you know what they say,” she says, leaning in slightly, “Monkey see, monkey do.”

  “They don’t say that,” he argues.

  “They do on Earth-1.”

  He rolls his eyes because arguing with her is about as impossible as arguing with Cisco.  They’re always bringing new variables into the equation.  But he’ll never tell them that he loves it.  It keeps him on his toes.

  They’re interrupted by a flash of blue light and the familiar hum and pull of a portal being opened and when he turns, he’s presented with the image of Cisco stumbling towards them with a breach opened behind her.  He reaches out instinctively and catches her by the bicep before she can fall flat on her face.

  “Damn this heels,” she mutters as she straightens, “I’m hating Iris so much, right now.”

  Harry barely even hears her because now she’s looking up at him and he honestly thinks he forgot how to speak.  She’s stunning.  Her hair has been smoothed and straightened and she’s wearing just enough make-up for someone who knows her to tell.  She’s wearing a black dress that compliments her body flawlessly without being immodest in the slightest.

  It makes him stare and he doesn’t even realize it until Cisco is giving him a weird look and leaning away from him, saying, “What?”

  She turns to Jesse for an explanation when he can’t seem to form words and _Jesse_ , who is obviously trying not to laugh, replies with, “Don’t worry.  He’s just trying to find his brain.  I think you knocked it out of the ball park.”

  Cisco looks confused and that’s around the time he finds his voice and is defusing the situation before Jesse can embarrass him more than he’s embarrassing himself.  “Let’s get going or we’ll be late,” he says, guiding Cisco towards the garage.

  “Oh, wait,” Cisco says suddenly, stopping and fumbling with a small device in her hands.  It’s HR’s gadget.  She steps back a couple spaces and holds it to her face and then out to them and then back to her face.  And then she’s tossing it through the breach, which closes soon after.  “There.  Now you two are the only ones who’ll see this beautiful face,” she grins at them cheekily.

  Both him and Jesse roll their eyes.  “Come on,” he says again.

  “Have fun you two,” Jesse tells them, “I’ll be on Earth-1.”

  This time it’s his turn to pause and he turns towards her, “Earth-1?  Why would you be there?”

  Jesse clasps her hands behind her back and shakes her head, an innocent expression on her face.  “Oh, no reason.  Just to visit friends.  I hear Wally’s a speedster now too, so I thought we could practice together.”

  He narrows his eyes because he’s not blind and he saw the way those two shared meaningful glances and shy smiles.

  “Come on, Harry,” Cisco whispers to him, pushing him slightly towards the door, “Wally’s a good guy.  You don’t have to worry about him.”

  “I always worry,” he hisses back to her but he only nods to Jesse and lets Cisco lead him away.

  By the time they get to the restaurant, it’s clear that Cisco isn’t used to heels.  At all.  She clings to his arm like a lifeline, like he’s the only thing keeping her upright.  Which he no doubt is.  He doesn’t mind, though.  He’s actually enjoying the feeling of her pressed so close.

  But the evening doesn’t go as smoothly as he hoped.

  He can tell Cisco is nervous.  He knows that she was brought up in the lower end of a middle-class home.  Knows that the only reason she even went to college was because she got a full ride scholarship.  It’s obvious in the way she talks and moves and dresses.  Her idea of dressing up is flat ironing her hair and not wearing a graphic t-shirt.  It’s one of the things he loves about her.  But he also wants her to be happy and to have everything she needs for that.  He thought (and he’ll never admit to this either) that taking her here would be romantic.  That this would be a way to show her that he’ll do anything for her.  Even dress up and eat an expensive dinner in public amongst stuffy people.

  He should have known that Cisco’s anxiety over social expectations would get in the way.  Because by the time dinner is over, she has tipped over her drink twice, spilling it on their waiter once and herself on the other.  Switched forks at least thirty times because she doesn’t know which one to use and you can tell just by looking at her face she’s too embarrassed to ask.  Accidentally made another waiter drop a tray full of somebody else’s food.  And broke just about every etiquette rule there is despite all her efforts.  And to make things worse, she looked absolutely horrified when she caught a glance at the check, exclaiming in a shock voice, _“237 dollars?”_ loud enough for the neighboring tables to hear.  They’re getting blatant stares when he ushers her out of the restaurant.

  In the car, she sits quietly in the passenger seat and he can tell she’s trying not to cry.  He just smiles and shallows down the laugh that almost bubbles out because he doesn’t think she’d appreciate that at the moment.  He reaches out and takes one of her fidgeting hands in his and gives it a comforting squeeze.

  “I’m sorry I embarrassed you,” she whispers after a moment.

  “You didn’t embarrass me, Cisco,” he tells her, “It takes more than a bumbling girlfriend for that.”

  Her hand tightens around his and he steers the car to a familiar diner.  And he thinks the evening might be worth the smile she beams at him.

  They’re walking through the park nearby, milkshakes in one hand and the other clasp around the other person’s.  She’s left her shoes in the car so she’s walking barefoot besides him.  He followed her lead and left his tie flung in the back seat.  They’re discussing the different theories each Earth has on quantum mechanics.  He loves the way she grasps the complexity of the issue, even if she doesn’t have much in the way of her own opinions.  Physics isn’t her field of study, so he forgives her for only arguing someone else’s theory.

  When they decide to turn around, Cisco hurts her foot (she’s pretending, the brat) so Harry carries her piggyback style back to the car.

  It’s when they’re almost halfway back that the evening plunges from recovering to shattered.

  He’s too busy listening to Cisco’s voice in his ear, too busy enjoying the heat the seeps into his back from her body, and how smooth and soft her legs are underneath his hands.  How relaxed she is, arms looped loosely around his shoulders and her cheek resting on her arm. 

  Then he hears someone shouting his name.

  “Dr. Harrison Wells.”

 

 


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo.... I really have no excuse for basically abandoning this fic. I've kind lost interest in this fandom and thus, lost my muse for this story. And I didn't really care to find it. But, to my surprise, I still have people leaving comments and kudos even after all these months and it's just made me feel guiltier and guiltier about not finishing this. So I finished it. I probably won't write anything more in this fandom, but I'll have you all know that I loved being a part of it for that brief time. Thanks guys. And sorry for the ridiculously long wait. That it happened on a cliffhanger. Which, I actually do feel guilty for.
> 
> __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

  Sometimes, Cisco’s life feels like a movie.  Like now, with her chest pressed up against Harry’s back and her arms looped around his shoulders and his warm, callous hands curled under her knees.  Like a scene from a chick flick.   The couple laughing merrily as the guy gives his girlfriend a ride on his back, their smiles wide open and carefree.  She wonders if people look at her and Harry and think ‘perfect’.  Or if people look at them and think ‘why’.  Sometimes it feels like that.  One moment, they’re perfect and the next…Cisco is wondering if maybe he would be happier with someone else.  But then he gives her this look.  Like she’s the only reason he’s happy.  Like the only reason he _lives,_ the actual go-out-and-live-your-damn-life-and-be-happy kind of living, is because she’s with him.  Like she’s the wind and he’s the cloud and the only reason he moves is because she pushes him.  And it’s scary as hell because she’s never had someone look at her like that and she doesn’t know if that’s normal or if Harry is too dependent on her.

  But then…she thinks that she might be a little too dependent on Harry.  So maybe it works out.  And maybe that’s normal?  Or not.  Maybe this is something that’s unique to only them.  Maybe it’s something no one else would completely understand.  A new breed of happiness, where maybe you trust someone else a little too much and not everything is perfect because life rarely is, but somehow it works out in the end.  Where the universe doesn’t screw you completely over because here’s someone you wouldn’t mind spending the rest of your life with.

  She thinks that sometimes it almost feels like this can’t be real.  Like maybe she’s vibing another Earth where Harrison Wells and Cisco Ramon are together and happy and changing the world together.  She sometimes feels like she’ll wake up and Harry will be gone, vanished like the ghost of wishes never to come.  But for the last few months, she’s been waking up and he’s still been around.  Figuratively, of course, since he’s been spending a lot of time on Earth-2.  But when she projects to him, he gives her a warm smile that used to be reserved for Jesse (and only Jesse) and it does more to calm her racing fears than all the words in the world.  Because _that_ is the proof she needs to know that he is hers and she is his.  And knowing this settles something inside of her.  Something that’s been drifting for a long, long time.

  She’s never really felt this way before and wonders if this is what you see when you look at one of those older couples whose been together for years upon years and plan to be together for years upon years more.

  She sighs at the thought, a smile gracing her lips.  “I love you,” she whispers in his ear.  It’s not the first time she’s said it, but it feels weirdly like the first time.  Like the realization struck her just now.  Or more like…this _feeling_ has been there, the whole time, sitting on the back burner and just now she’s reminded of it.  Reminded of how long it’s been sitting there, cooking, stewing, _boiling_ to a point that she can’t ignore it.  Unwittingly or no.  She can’t ignore it.  Not that she really wants or needs to anymore.  And that’s really what makes her smile.  Because she doesn’t have to hide it, hasn’t had to for two months.

  Harry turns his head awkwardly to shoot her a wide smirk and his mouth parts as if he’s about to respond, but then a voice interrupts them.

  “Dr. Harrison Wells.”  The voice calls and it seems to reverberate through the empty park.

  Harry stops and turns halfway, his fingers tightening around the sides of her knees and she tightens her arms around his stiffening shoulders.  They both turn their heads to the side, tense and ready, and see a man standing on the dimly lit path about twenty feet away.  He has shadows streaking across the pale skin of his face and his dark hair is cut in a short buzz.  He’s wearing an oversized black coat and both of his hands are stuffed in the pockets.

  Harry slowly lowers her legs and her feet hit the pavement gently, bare toes followed by callous heels.  She retracts her arms from his shoulders, sliding her hands to rest flat palmed on his shoulder blades.  Then his hand is pushing at her waist and he’s turning fully to face the man while making sure she’s safely behind him.  “Who are you?” he asks, his voice low and menacing like a wolf’s growl.

  “For right now, nobody of importance,” the man answers cryptically, like he’s the psycho in some cheesy Bond movie.

  “What do you want?” Cisco asks, and she’s not sure how she does it, but her voice is steady despite the rapids of terror pumping ice water through her veins.

  The man shifts his head a little, the shadows flitter across his face revealing a cold smirk.  Cisco shifts her hands down to clench her fists around the coattails of Harry’s jacket and pulls him back a step.  Trying to put distance between them and this creep.  Because she suddenly knows.  In a horrible, sickening sense of certainly, she knows that this guy is going to try to kill them.

  Then, with a swiftness that makes her lungs stop working properly, the man pulls a gun out of one of his pockets and fires.  It sounds like thunder.

  Cisco gasps.  Harry goes down with a strangled howl.  Collapsing on his side.  Clutching his right thigh just above the knee.

  _“Harry,”_ she shrieks, dropping to kneel besides him, fingers gripping his shoulder tightly.  Her mind goes into a panic.  There’s blood seeping out from underneath his fingers.  Blood.  Lots of blood.  Shit.

  She looks up at the man, the gun still pointed at them.  And she can’t think.  Can’t…but then she looks back down at Harry’s leg and there’s too much blood, much too fast.  And then her brain goes into overdrive and she’s searching for something to stop the bleeding.  Stop it or slow it down.  Something until they get help.  She looks down at herself and then in the area around them, her eyes frantic in their quest to find something, something, _something_.  That’s when she notices Harry’s belt.  “Hey,” she soothes shakily, sparing a moment to brush at his forehead with her trembling fingers, “Stay with me.”

  But Harry barely even spares her a glance.  He looks pale and sweaty and his jaw is clenched, his fingers like claws digging into his thigh.  But his painfilled eyes are open and honed on the man still standing in the same spot, twenty feet away.  Cisco glances up again, finally registering his sadistic chuckles echoing softly in the still night, while she undoes Harry’s belt and rolls him onto his back.  He lets her move him without complaint, turning his head to keep the man in his sights.  She slips the belt around his thigh, trying to ignore the red that keeps spreading, soaking his black slacks and seeping onto the pavement.  How it’s starting to get on her hands.  And she thinks, _“Out, out, damn spot!”_   And can’t really think of anything else for a moment, but she manages to secure the belt with unsteady fingers, muttering an apology when he hisses.  Tears fill her eyes, but she keeps the tourniquet tight and firm because she really doesn’t need Harry bleeding out on her.  Really, really, doesn’t need that.

  “Run,” Harry orders through clenched teeth, his voice stretched into a thin, tense line.  She looks up, sees him staring at her, eyes grey and intense, and there’s so much agony and fear in those eyes that it seems to deepen the wrinkles around them.  “When you get the chance, run.”

  She wants to tell him _‘no’_ but the word sticks in her throat and she can’t say it.  Can’t say anything because she’s struck by the sight of his pain.  Of his agony.  She hates it when the people she cares about are hurting.  Every time she sees it, it’s like a bomb going off in her gut, sharp and sudden and all consuming.  It awakens something in her, a strength that only comes out in times like these.

  She looks up, noticing that the man has started to come closer, his steps slow and casual.  She frowns at his easy stride, the gun down and hanging loosely from his fingers like he doesn’t think they’re a threat anymore.  Like a hunter believing his target is harmless now, wounded and whimpering.

  Well, this guy has another thing coming if he thinks she’s just going to sit by and let him kill Harry.

  She stands and Harry’s hand is suddenly gripping her calf like a vice, warm liquid being smeared across the smooth skin.  _“No,”_ he hisses at her and she can hear his desperation.  Can taste it like bile in her mouth.

  But she ignores it.  Ignores the way he tries to push her away, towards safety.  She moves to step over his torso, ignoring how he struggles to sit up, how he grabs her wrist tight enough to pinch the skin.  He gives her arm a firm tug, but he doesn’t have the leverage to stop her from coming to stand between him and the man.  She raises her other hand, palm outward, and tries not to think about how it trembles.  Of the blood covered fingers that filter into her field of vision.  She tries not to think about how she doesn’t have her goggles or gauntlets.  About how she’s pretty sure a bullet would be faster than a vibe blast.  Instead, she thinks about Harry, hurt and bleeding, and how for the first time _he_ needs _her_ to be the protector.  “Leave us the hell alone,” she says and there’s a real venom in her voice that has never been there before.  But it’s almost drowned out by the fear.  By the way her voice cracks on the words.  By the way her bottom lip quivers.

  She hates it.  Has always hated it.  Hates that she’s _sounds_ afraid, sounds _terrified_ , when she’s trying to be brave.

  The man stops and he’s close enough now that she can see him raise an eyebrow at her, amusement tugging at the corner of his lips.  His brown eyes are a shade so dark they look black.  They seem to pierce the night, the lamp light glinting off of them like stars in the heavens.  He looks down at Harry and then there’s a smug grin stretching his mouth wide like a shark.  He raises the gun again, his eyes puncturing Cisco’s thin veil of confidence, and readies to pull the trigger.

  But Cisco is faster.  For once, she’s faster.  She can feel the vibrations bend to her will, the strange resonance of Earth-2 flooding her, solidifying for her.  It’s messy and chaotic and it takes more concentration, but she does it with an ease that reminds her of something she doesn’t want…doesn’t _ever_ want to happen.

  It feels like time slows as she watches their attacker fly back after being hit dead center by the short burst of blue vibrations.

  Cisco stands in shock, hand outstretched and mouth open.  The dull _thud_ as the man hits the ground farther away from them barely registers in her ears.  The full impact of what just happened slams into her like a charging bull.

  She just used her powers.  Without her gear.  Which is scary as hell.  And kinda cool, but mostly scary as hell.

  She vaguely hears Harry say her name, his hand tugging at her wrist urgently, and she looks down at him.  He looks shocked and maybe a little scared too but he also looks like he just wants to get out of here.

  And then there’s a loud _bang_ and something is piercing her stomach and she’s being forced backwards by the impact.  Then she’s tripping over Harry.  Falling.  Harry yelling, loud, devastated.  Landing hard on her back.  Pulling the air from her lungs.  Her head smacking against the pavement.

  And then agony.  White and hot and she can’t see for a moment.  Can’t breathe.  Can’t…can’t…

  Harry blinks into focus.  His face a mess of wrinkles and worry lines, like a miss-matched quilt.  He’s saying her name.  Moving.  Frantic and quick.  He cups her face and suddenly there’s a sticky wetness on her cheeks and chin and neck.  Sound registers moments later, matching up with the movement of Harry’s lips.

  “No, no, Cisco.  Stay with me.  Stay with me.”  And then he’s ripping off his nice, expensive suit jacket, bunching it up, and placing it over her stomach.  She cries out as the pain intensifies, vision funneling to a narrow point, and then every nerve ending catches fire.  She’s pretty sure she blacks out for a moment because the next thing she’s aware of is Harry being pistol whipped.  She hears him grunt as he’s flung away to her right and then there’s the barrel of a gun pointed at her face from her left.  The angry frown of their attacker glares unfocused behind it.  And she can do nothing but lay there, gasping out her anguish and fear.

  “Harrison Wells dating a metahuman,” the man sneers, his voice rough like sandpaper, “Now, isn’t that ironic?  I’m sure some people would appreciate the humor.”  His face hardens.  “It just makes me sick.”  His finger twitches on the trigger.

  _“No!”_ Harry yells and lunges over her torso, his hand flying up and knocking the gun’s aim off.  It fires and she feels a sheering pain rip her cheek open.  She jerks her head away from the pain, a yelp ripping out of her mouth.  Then Harry is pushing off the ground and springing like a coil over top of her, tackling the man at the waist.  They both go down.  One of Harry’s feet drag over her stomach and her mind blanks at the pain.  She’s blinks her vision back into focus when she hears Harry cry out in pain, and she looks in time to see their attacker swing his elbow in a swift, tight arch and catch Harry across the cheek bone.  The force of it knocks Harry away and the attacker kicks him in the gut, adding the distance between them.  Then the man as scrambling to his knees and he points the gun at Harry and Cisco feels her heart stop.

  She doesn’t think.  Just flings out her hand, palm open and ready, and lets the vibrations flow from it.  The blast hits the man in the side and he’s sent flying far away from them.  She doesn’t hear him hit the ground.  Doesn’t hear him cry out in surprise or pain or, or…or…  Because her arm is falling from its raised position, smacking against the pavement dully.  Her mind starts to wander, floating around aimlessly in the void, the edges of her vision becoming fuzzy and confused.  Then Harry is there, turning her head towards him, a hand pushing on her stomach but she barely feels it this time.  Barely feels anything.  He’s saying something, his voice harsh and desperate as her eyes glaze over and everything starts to fade.  Like the light slipping away during a sunset.  She thinks he’s telling her to stay.  To not leave him.  To please.  _Please._   Please, please, please, please…

  …please not this again…

 

 

~~~~~~

 

 

  The breach room on Earth-1 Star Labs is normally empty.  Occasionally, a person or persons are seen within the grey walls when crossing the fabrication of the multiverse or when someone might just need a space to just think.  Alone.  Surrounded by the calming beeps and whirs emitting from the nearby equipment.

  But now, it’s not so calm.  A breach opens, the blue chaos swirling and flooding.  An alarm sounds and as three speedsters zip into the room, ready for a fight, a tall man falls from blue and collapses heavily on his knees.  He’s carrying the limp form of a woman, cradling her close to his chest.  He’s yelling.  Begging for help.  Red blood drips onto the floor, smearing when the tallest speedster steps in it.  He’s taking the woman, transferring her into his arms with care and urgency.  The man from the breach looks torn.  Broken wide open as he watches someone _else_ take his treasure away.

  The tall speedster disappears in a flash and the woman speedster takes his place.  She’s soon joined by the other male speedster and together they take the man from the breach away.

  And the breach room is quiet again.  The calm beeps and whirs lulling the room’s energy back to sleep.  The only sign of disturbance is the blood that holds the painted imprints of hurried shoes and shaky hands.

 

 

~~~~~

 

 

   Cisco wakes up once to the sensation of something long and plastic in her mouth, snaking down her throat.  To the sound of annoying beeps that seems to bounce off the walls in a messy discord.  To the sound of _click, whoosh, click, whoosh, click, whoosh_ and the sound of someone talking.  They say her name.  Her full first name, Francisco.  There’s the vague sense of intense pain and the inability to move her limbs or open her eyes.  And being cold.  Really, really cold.

  She falls back into unconsciousness thinking that this is the most realistic movie she’s ever seen.

  Except it’s not a movie.  She wakes up again and she can’t seem to focus on anything but the agony that sheers through her belly.  Someone is saying her name again and this time it’s the right way.

  “Cisco?  Hold on, Cisco.  I called Caitlin.  Just hold my hand, okay?”

  It sounds like Iris, so Cisco squeezes the hand in hers and even through the pain she can tell her grip is pathetically weak.  She thinks that she’s dying.  She must be.  She tries to open her eyes but only manages a few blinks, catching the vague impression of a person, before she can’t put any more effort into the act.  She whimpers and it’s only then that she realizes the plastic tube is gone, replaced by something poking in her nose, blowing cool air into her nostrils.

  She hears the sound clicking heels but she’s slipping back into the abyss before she fully knows what’s going on.

  The next time she wakes up, it’s to a voice singing a soft lullaby.  She opens her eyes slowly, trying to remember what happened and where she was, but she’s distracted by the song.  It sounds familiar.   She turns her head slightly towards the sound and is struck with the image of Joe sitting in a hard chair, staring at the foot of the bed.  And it feels familiar.  Like is has happened before.

  She closes her eyes to blink, trying to make sense of this feeling of déjà vu…  But she falls back asleep instead.

  The next time she wakes up, it’s because a loud bang echoes in the room and she startles into consciousness.  The sound seems to jump start something in her brain and suddenly she remembers.  “Harry,” she croaks, her voice sounding like it was put through a meat grinder.

  There’s cursing and someone being shoved out of the room and then there’s a man bending over her and she thinks her heart might stop.

  “Miss Ramon, it’s alright.  Calm down,” he says soothingly.

  But Cisco does not feel soothed.  In fact, she can’t breathe because he has dark eyes that glint in the dim lights.  “No…” she whispers, terror sinking into the pit of her gut and she’s back in that park, laying on the cold pavement with a gun pointed at her head.  “No, no, Harry… _Harry._ ”  She screams, voice hoarse and harsh and cracking painfully.  A beeping sound somewhere above her becomes erratic.  She moves away from the man, her head wiping around, trying to find Harry but the man places his hands on her shoulders, pushing her down onto the unforgiving ground.  She tries to break free, but he’s too strong and she’s too weak and…Harry…  _“Harry!”_ she screams again, vainly trying to twist away, ignoring the pain that intensifies with every jerk and pull.

  And then.  Harry is there.  Gripping her face with warm, dry hands and he’s saying her name.  “Cisco.  Calm down.  It’s okay.  We’re safe.”

  And just like that, the dark shadows of the empty park snap out of existence and are replaced by the familiar machines of the medbay.  The machines she’s personally cared for and nurtured.  The ones she’s knows well.  And she’s surrounded by people she knows well.  The man from the park shifts, morphing into Julian, dark eyes giving way to blue.  Caitlin hovering by the IV stand.  Harry bending over her.

  Touching her.  Focusing on her.  Making her focus on him.  He looks scared.  In pain.  She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him like this.  Not so openly falling apart.  But Cisco doesn’t have time to contemplate that because something is tugging her back into unconsciousness.  She lets it.  Satisfied that he’s here.  That he’s safe.  That they’re okay.

  It’s daytime when she wakes again, the sun filtering through the high windows, and this time it’s Caitlin hovering above her.  A winning smile breaks out on Caitlin’s face and she says, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Cisco whispers and looks around.  But it’s just her and Caitlin.  She turns back to her friend, a question parting her lips.  “Harry?”

  Caitlin gives her a sympathetic but reassuring smile.  “He’s fine.  The wound in his leg wasn’t serious.  It’s was mostly a flesh wound.  He got off bed rest yesterday.  Not that that really kept him from getting out of bed.”

  Cisco frowns and feels like she missed a part to the story.  “What happened?” she rasps, then coughs.

  Caitlin’s face turns serious, furrowing her brow and pursing her lips, as she gently pushes a straw leading to cool liquid up against Cisco’s bottom lip.  “What do you remember?” she asks when Cisco has had her fill and her scratchy throat no longer feels like sandpaper.

  Cisco hums for a moment, thinking, but mostly beginning to lose the battle against weariness.  “Being attacked,” she says low and fading.  She tries to remember details.  The image of a man.  Dark eyes.  Cruel snarl.  A gun flashing, sparks flying as a bullet is released.  Harry being hit violently on the face.  Kicked in the torso.  Gun pointed at his head.

  That night comes in moments.  Predominate still-shots that will forever haunt her.  But there’s a gap.  A void from when she was lying on the ground bleeding to waking up in the medbay.

  Caitlin nods.  A hand comes up and grips Cisco’s shoulder.  “Harry got you out,” she informs, “He brought you here using a breach link,” an amused smirk suddenly quirking the corner of her mouth, “It seems he keeps one in his pocket at all times.”

  And that makes Cisco smile tiredly, eyes drooping until they close completely.  “Such a boy scout,” she mumbles fondly before fading into the black depths of slumber.

  It’s quiet when she wakes again.  The soft beeps drift through still air, settling one by one on the calm line of atmosphere.  Consciousness comes to her like the water’s surface as she floats up until she breaks the barrier and feels the cool air.  She blinks.  Once.  Twice.  Tries to focus in the dim light.  It’s a little hard to concentrate, like fighting through clouds of cotton.  She wonders what kind of medication Caitlin has her on.

  Movement to her right shifts her attention.  A faint smile stretches her lips when Harry’s face bends over her.  “Harry,” she sighs and even though it takes a monumental effort, she manages to move her hand, flipping it palm up in silent request.  He takes it; his fingers warm and callous, the rough pad of his thumb rubbing across the skin that connects her thumb and pointer finger.  Then he lifts their hands and sits heavily on the edge of the bed by her side, wincing when he moves his right leg.  His weight causes a dip in the mattress, making her body gravitate towards him.  He then places their joined hands in his lap and she practically melts when he moves to stroke her brow tenderly.  Then he’s bending down to kiss her softly on the lips and she can feel his emotion in the way he lingers, the way his hands tremble slightly, the way his face stays close to her and the line of unshed tears seep into the corners of his eyes.

  “I thought I lost you,” he whispers, his thumb traces the outline of the bandage on her right cheek.  Then he’s kissing her again and there’s an overwhelming need behind it.  The need to touch.  To feel.  To be reassured.

  A tear slips from her eye and she doesn’t even know when she started crying, but he’s here and he’s safe and she almost lost him too.  Her breath hitches and she’s choking out his name when he stands suddenly and moves to lay at her side.  He tucks her against his chest and she ignores the pain when it strains her stomach, stuffing her face in his collarbone.  He holds her tight and firm around the shoulders, arms curled around her in a protective embrace.  She can feel his arms tremble in the effort to not crush her, to not hold her tighter, tighter, _tighter so no one can try to take her away again._

  They don’t talk.  Just breathe.  And she gets lost in the feel of his lips pressed firmly against her hair, of his breath coming from his nostrils, and the beating of his heart sounding strong and steady and firm.  She listens to it whisper to her.  The calming _thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump._   It speaks of reassurance and hope.  It says _alive, alive, alive_ in the staccato rhythm of the living.  Music to ears willing to listen, willing to understand the miracle of it.

  She doesn’t even realize she drifts off until she wakes up to the noise of Caitlin puttering around the room.  She asks in hushed tones if Harry’s hurting her in any way and Cisco shakes her head, a small smile brushing her lips and she just breathes Harry’s scent in, not caring that he smells like he needs a shower.  She probably doesn’t smell much better.  She listens to his breathing and it’s like listening to the ocean waves.  Calming.  Steadying.  Therapeutic.  She needs this.  Needs it after that nightmare where a man pointed a gun at Harry with the intention of killing him.

 Were they ever going to just live a relatively quiet life?  One without the threat of someone they love dying?  Was it ever going to get easy?

  She doubts it.  Her life hasn’t had every many ‘easy’ spells.  She’s had to work hard for the things she’s got and work even harder to keep them.

  It takes a disturbing amount of energy, but she manages to lift her forearm and settle a hand on the arm Harry has draped across her.  And holds on as tight as she can, which is pathetically weak and unsteady.  But she drifts off before she has time to wonder at the irony of it.  To wonder if it parallels the undertones of her life.

 

 

~~~~~~

 

 

  “Where’s your crutch?” Cisco asks as Harry limps into the medbay two days later.  She gives him a pointed look from her spot on the bed, the head raised so she can sit up a little without _actually_ having to sit up.  The remains of her lunch is left forgotten off to the side on a table tray.  Which he frowns at, his brow pulling down like a cowl.

  “Aren’t you going to eat that?” he asks as he sits in his claimed spot: a big comfy chair pushed flush against the bedside.  He slowly lifts his right leg with a small, masked wince and rests it on the ottoman someone had found and brought to the room, probably by Caitlin’s request.  Cisco’s been told that getting him to leave her side those first few days was like trying to pry a hardened barnacle from the bottom of a boat with a butter knife.  At least, according to Julian.

  She rolls her eyes at him.  “Right, ignore the question.  Maybe I’ll forget and stop asking,” she huffs at him, “Which would only happen if I had brain damage.  But seeing as my mind remains beautifully intact, despite _your_ best efforts, I don’t think that’ll ever happen.”

  He snorts at her and tries to look irritated, almost pulls it off too, if it weren’t for the slight quirk at the corner of him lips.  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t answer mine,” she shoots back.

  They stare at each other for a moment, a silent battle of stubbornness.  It’s Cisco that gives in first.  Mostly because she’s about to fall asleep again and winning arguments that way is getting boring.  It _is_ funny how frustrated it makes him, though.  But after drifting off in the middle of kissing last night, she figures she owes him this.  Especially since it freaked him the hell out when she just suddenly stopped responding to something she normally takes great joy in doing.

  “I got full,” she says matter-of-fact, eyes not leaving his.

  He frowns even deeper, flicking a glance towards the nearly full bowl of soup.  “Did you even eat any of it?”

  “Yes, Dr. Snow,” she signs in exasperation, her eyes circling up to the ceiling and back, “I had ten whole spoonfuls.”  She makes sure to put every bit of sarcastic snark she has in every word.  Because this song and dance is starting to get old and grey and she hopes it dies soon.  She wonders why people don’t just take her word for it.

  But he only looks troubled.  Like he’s about to get up and force feed her until he’s satisfied she’s not starving.

  She sighs again, this time soft and weary.  “I’m fine, Harry,” she tries to assure him, “Caitlin said it’ll take a while before I can eat near as much as I used to.  Or even get my appetite back.  The fact that I ate anything is a good sign.”  He meets her gaze and she smiles, small and warm and he can probably see her love painted plain as day on her face, but she doesn’t care.  Just tells him, “I’ll be okay.”

  The smile he gives her is equally small and warm and she can see his love painted plain as day.  Which is cheesy, sure, but she doesn’t care.  She flips her hand over, exposing her palm, and he takes it in his, lacing their fingers together.

  He dozes off not long after and she expects to join him soon.  Her eyes drift lazily across the ceiling tiles, mindlessly trace imaginary patterns.

  It really is bizarre to think that only seven days ago, she had been shot and was bleeding out on a park pavement.  Seven days.  It seems like a long time but also no time at all.  She knows her perception of time is a little wonky at the moment, constantly drifting off at all the odd hours of the day would do that to anyone, but it only feels like a few days have passed.  Not a week.  She supposes being unconscious for most of that time is the reason for that.  Still.

  She turns her head, her eyes now tracing more familiar patterns across Harry’s face.  The swelling is gone, she notes.  The bruising is still there, though.  Two large ones on either side of his face.  One at his right temple, stretching across his right eye, and the other on the left side of his jaw.  Those and his limp are the obvious signs from that night.  She knows that he has more bruising on his chest and stomach from where he’d been kicked.  She wonders if he’s taking his pain medicine.  She kinda doubts it.  He’s stubborn and cranky and he hates how pain pills numb his mind.  And she can only helplessly shrug when Caitlin turns to her for assistance.  It’s not like he’d listen to her either.  Stubborn and cranky, remember?

  A fond chuckle bubbles out, jarring her wound along the way.  Damn, laughing hurt.  She hisses quietly, moving her free hand to press lightly against the small pillow laying on her stomach, trying to brace against the pain.  It only helps a little, but she takes what she can get at this point.  She relaxes slightly when the pain dulls back into bearable levels.

  Laying there for a moment, she’s thinks about how the damage to her body could’ve been worse.  Caitlin’s told her as much.  _“Honestly, you’re lucky the bullet stopped where it did.  Aside from piercing your stomach, it didn’t hit any other organs and missed all the major arteries.”_

  Lucky, huh.  Cisco’s been thinking about that word a bit lately.  Looking at Harry, she thinks she’s lucky the man didn’t aim for the head or heart or hit a major artery when the bullet entered Harry’s leg.  She thinks that she’s lucky Harry was only grazed and bruised.  Lucky that he’s still around.  That he’s alive.  Because that night could have gone many different ways and Cisco will probably be haunted by all of them once the nightmares come.  Once sleep becomes less like unconsciousness aided by drugs and more like it’s supposed to be.  They’ll come.  Swooping down on raven’s wings and clawing their way into her dreams.  And she knows in every one of them she’ll lose him.  To a bullet.  To blunt force trauma.  To a knife.  To a car.  Any way her mind could make it more horrible.  More terrifying.  More _real_.

  Yeah, she’s lucky.  Lucky he’s still here, holding her hand while he sleeps, exhaustion and pain creasing his brow.  She knows sleeping in a chair can’t be comfortable, but he’s refused every offer to have a cot brought in.  He hasn’t said why, but he doesn’t need to.  Because he says it in the way he clutches her hand when he sleeps.  The way his eyes search for her the moment he wakes up.  He needs contact.  Needs it to be readily available.  Within reach.  And a cot would be too low to the ground.  He couldn’t hold her hand.  Couldn’t see her the moment he wakes.

  So he grumbles that if he needs to sleep in a bed, he’ll share with Cisco.  Rolls his eyes and snarks at anyone who tries to argue with him.  And remains stubbornly in his chair, ottoman positioned just so.

  And honestly?  She doesn’t mind.  Prefers it, actually.  Because she might need the contact too.

  A soft knock at the doorway leads her gaze to it and she sees HR standing there, a small, slightly smug grin on his face.  She follows his stare.  Harry’s head has lulled to the side, resting on the pillows someone (Jesse, probably) had stuffed in between the bed and chair, creating the perfect head rest.  There are the telltale huffs of almost snoring, his mouth slightly parted.  It’ll never get old seeing him like this.  She has many, many pictures.  And many, many backups of those pictures saved in many, many places so that if he ever finds out, she’ll always have a copy of each and every one of them.  She smiles fondly at him.  Her cheek twinges when the expression pulls at the stitches there.

  HR steps in the room, whispering in amusement, “You know, I don’t think _that,”_ he emphasizes while pointing a drumstick at Harry, “Will ever stop being just absolutely adorable.”

  Cisco nods in agreement.  “You’re probably right,” she whispers back, then she turns her attention on HR, noticing for the first time that he’s hiding something colorful behind his back, “What’s that?”

  He looks almost startled by the question, but quickly recovers when he awkwardly sweeps out a bouquet of flowers in a short round vase, bowing gallantly in one, somewhat, smooth motion.  When he straightens, a pleased smile plastered on his lips, he presents them to her.  “For you.  Because every beautiful woman deserves flowers and if you’re going to stay _here_ ,” he gives the room an unimpressed look, “For the next few weeks, you’re going to need something to liven it up a little.”

  She feels her lips twitch into a smirk.  “You didn’t have to do that,” she says, watching him walk around the bed to place the bouquet on the table next to her.

  He nods, tilting his head bashfully to the side.  “Well, yeah, of course, I _didn’t_.  But as they say, you never _have_ to do nice things, but isn’t _that_ what makes doing nice things meaningful?”

  She blinks at him, raising both eyebrows in thought.  “Huh.  You’re not wrong.”

  HR nods again.  One of those full-body nods he does when he really agrees with something, that make him look like a bobble head.  Then he looks down at his hands, fingers fiddling with the one drumstick.  “Yes, well, anyway.  I just…wanted to do something useful.  I mean, I _know_ there’s not a lot someone like me can do in a circumstance like this, but, you know, I had to find _something_.  Especially since I accidentally woke you up, which put you in a panic and had you tearing a stitch.”  He laughs a little then, guilt filling his face and weighing down his shoulders, before adding, “Everyone was _pissed_.  Especially Caitlin.  Still is, actually.  I’m not even technically supposed to be in here.”

  She frowns a little, eyes searching his face.  She notices that he can’t seem to look her in the eyes, his gaze always coming shy of her face.  Not for the first time, she feels ashamed for the cold shoulder she pushed his way.  Not for the first time, she feels compelled to say something.  “Hey,” she starts and doesn’t continue until he’s finally looking at her, “Thanks.  For the flowers.  They’re really nice.”  Her gaze shifts to study the arrangement of yellows, pinks, and oranges.  “Orange is my favorite color,” she adds, because why not?  That’s normally something friends know about each other.  She meets his eager gaze again, watching as he laps up her every word.  With the eyes of a child wishing only to do it right.  It makes her feels like she should say something more.  Something like…  “And you know, you don’t have to be useful to be friends with someone.”

  She sees his eyes light up, ever-so-slightly.  The grin that stretches across his cheeks looks like it hurts, and she internally winces because she’d probably bust a stitch in her cheek if she grinned that wide.  But he’s babbling and bobbling, “Friends.  Right.  Friends.”

  He leaves the room whistle a tune she doesn’t recognize.  And Harry opens his eyes soon after.  “Why is it you always have heart-to-hearts after you wake up from almost dying?” he asks, sounding grumpy.  Like just the thought of heart-to-hearts is something to be grumpy about.  She knows he’s full of it, though.

  She raises an eyebrow at him.  “Really?  Wasn’t it a heart-to-heart that brought us together?”

  “If I recall, it was actually more like a fight.”

  That makes her laugh.  Which makes her cough.  Which _hurts._   And it takes her a couple of minutes to catch her breath, which has him looking guilty and concerned but she just brushes it off and pulls at his sleeve until he’s settled into bed besides her.  They really don’t fit.  But neither of them care.  Not really.

 

The End.


End file.
